Aaron Brown, Columnist

The Bond ETF Sales Pitch Is Only Half the Story

May 1, 2026 at 10:00 AM UTC

Aaron Brown is a former head of financial market research at AQR Capital Management. He is also an active crypto investor, and has venture capital investments and advisory ties with crypto firms. He is the author of the soon-to-be-released "Wrong Number."

Market moves.
Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg

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The bond ETF industry is approaching $3.5 trillion in assets globally, and the fund managers running these exchange-traded funds would like you to know that bonds are back.

Yields are higher than they’ve been in a decade. Liquidity is deep. Active fixed-income ETFs pulled in more than $200 billion last year alone. The pitch, increasingly, is that bond ETFs are no longer a satellite holding to balance equity risk — they are the foundation of a modern portfolio.