At Exchange 2026, key thought leaders from firms across the country gathered in Las Vegas to share their ideas for navigating today’s macroeconomic uncertainty and the future of ETFs. During the conference, Marissa Ansell, head of ETF investment strategy at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, sat down with the VettaFi to discuss key investment trends, her firm’s ETF solutions, and more.
The Active Advantage
Nick Wodeshick: Similar to that of 2025, the macroeconomic picture for 2026 is already shaping up to be relatively uncertain and potentially volatile. Now, last year, we saw a lot of folks head towards international equities and active management as potential solutions for volatility in the United States. Are you expecting something similar to play out this year, or should we be prepared for any new surprises?
Marissa Ansell: The growth of active management has been a key trend that we’ve seen, both in the industry and in our ETF business. At the end of last year, active ETFs represented about 11% of overall U.S. listed ETF assets. And yet for the full year 2025, they represented 32% of flows and 86% of new launches. We can clearly see where the puck is going in terms of the growth trend and are very well positioned for this as we have actively managed portfolios for decades.
Goldman Sachs Asset Management is a top five global active manager and a leading alternatives manager with more than $3.6 trillion in assets under supervision. We have deep experience across both public and private markets, all different asset classes, and all different geographies. When we think about our ETF business, it is an extension of those capabilities. We have a broad range of ETFs that offer our active management expertise across different geographies, different asset classes, different sectors, and styles. We’re really trying to serve the entirety of our clients’ portfolios.
Nick Wodeshick: On the market backdrop, there’s obviously a lot of uncertainty and volatility there. What does it mean for investors?
Marissa Ansell: It means that investors need to have a lot of tools in their toolkit. Ultimately, clients need to build diversified portfolios. Passive probably plays a part in that, but active solutions definitely should have a role. I think it’s smart to go active especially in parts of the market where information is more opaque. So, that generally means less efficient markets, such as small cap equities or international and emerging markets, where it’s easier for active managers that have deep research capabilities to find the right securities that may generate alpha.
The Small-Cap Opportunity
Nick Wodeshick: On the topic of diversification, you mentioned small caps and emerging markets. Do you see any spots there as diversification opportunities that investors should be paying more attention to right now?
Marissa Ansell: Yes, small caps for one of them. Small caps, as an asset class, have just been really out of favor for a while now. It’s one of the few large Morningstar categories that actually experienced outflows in 2025. But now as we look forward from here, there are a few things that could be in favor of small caps.
First, if rates continue to trend down, that’s a potential tailwind for small-cap equities. Second, fundamentals actually are pretty decent for small caps in our view. Lastly, M&A and IPO activity has picked up as well. This is not on its own a reason to own small caps, but it’s a nice additional catalyst for the asset class.
When you put those three things together, I think the setup for small caps is strong. On the flip side, generally small caps as an asset class don’t like uncertainty, they don’t like volatility. Having an experienced management team is important, but generally we believe there is a place for small caps in a portfolio.
Figuring Out Fixed Income
Nick Wodeshick: Pivoting a bit towards fixed income, many investors are still trying to figure out how to position their portfolios, especially with inflation data being all over the place and uncertainty over policymaking at the Federal Reserve. How are you and your team looking at opportunities in the fixed income space, whether it be in bonds or equity income?
Marissa Ansell: For bonds, this is a huge space that is ripe for disruption and for opportunities in ETFs in particular. If we think about the whole public fixed income market, including the scale of it, the structural inefficiencies, and the limitations of commonly used benchmarks, it’s a space that is ripe for the ETF wrapper and all the potential benefits that ETFs can bring. If you think about ETFs in fixed income, it’s an easy way to add diversification to your portfolios.
It’s very hard to do that as an individual investor—build a diversified bond portfolio by picking individual bonds. When we look at the overall ETF industry, fixed income ETFs represent only 17% of all U.S.-listed ETFs, but actively managed fixed income ETFs only represent 3%. So, it’s a massively underpenetrated space, in our view.
At Goldman Sachs Asset Management, we’ve launched a number of actively managed fixed income ETFs over the last couple of years. We launched a suite of actively managed municipal bond ETFs, including GMUB. We also launched one in the core bond space: GBND, and one in the corporate IG space: GIGL.
On equity income, this is a space that has been hugely popular with investors. Within active ETFs last year, derivative income was the number one flow gaining category.
The Derivative Income Draw
Nick Wodeshick: Why have they been so popular?
Marissa Ansell: I think it’s for a few different reasons. First, many investors want income. It’s a way of not being entirely dependent on potential capital appreciation, because you’re taking some of that return upfront. Derivative income strategies are a way of producing a pretty high and attractive source of regular income. Our premium income ETFs, GPIQ and GPIX, have paid out 10.5% and 8.5% annualized every month, respectively. Also, it’s a way to get equity exposure, but with less volatility, because we have a trailing beta of about 0.8 or 0.85.
Our premium income ETFs have actually delivered better upside capture historically than the peer group average, because we have an actively managed call writing strategy. We don’t just blindly write calls on the whole portfolio. We only write call options on as much of the portfolio as we need to in order to deliver relatively stable distribution rates. This is a real differentiator of our derivative income ETFs, GPIX and GPIQ, because we’ve been able to give clients more upside exposure when markets have gone up.
Putting that all together, as we look forward and think about where the industry is growing, we see further adoption of actively managed fixed income ETFs and derivative income ETFs. We also see innovation potential when it comes to putting private assets or private-like exposures in the ETF wrapper.
The Power of Private Equity-Like Returns
Nick Wodeshick: On that note, GTPE, the Goldman Sachs MSCI World Private Equity Return Tracker ETF, is an interesting strategy that is tied to private equity. Can you run us through its approach and why folks should consider gaining access to private equity-like returns?
Marissa Ansell: We are very excited about the launch of GTPE and continue to offer investors the tools they need to serve the entirety of their portfolio.
As a top alternatives asset manager, we think this is a nice complement to illiquid strategies. Because, if you think about it, a lot of investors still can’t access private equity directly, whether it’s because of the high minimums, the high fees, or the long lockup periods. This is a potential solution for them because it seeks to provide private equity-like returns via public equity exposure. But with the liquidity, transparency and cost benefits of an ETF.
For other investors who can and do access private equity directly, oftentimes they may be waiting a long time for that capital to be called. So, GTPE is a potential solution for those investors as well, because it is liquid and you can redeem at any point. But in the meantime, while you’re waiting for your capital to be called, you’re getting similar exposure.
More to Come in 2026
Nick Wodeshick: Those are all the questions I have, Marissa. Is there anything else you’d like to add for our readers?
Marissa Ansell: The ETF industry hit record highs last year across assets, volumes, launches, and flows. We believe this trend will continue. We believe active ETFs are going to be the number one growth driver within the ETF industry.
In our view, Goldman Sachs Asset Management is well-placed for continued adoption of active ETFs, because active management is in our DNA. We’re focused on bringing together our active investing expertise and putting it into the ETF wrapper, across different markets, asset classes, and geographies.
Originally published on ETF Trends
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