Can an Upstart ETF Provider Challenge the Biggest Asset Managers?

The Corgi Cannon

There’s a well-accepted maxim in exchange-traded fund development: Asset managers can’t reasonably expect to compete for business in today’s market by offering new versions of low-cost, broadly diversified ETFs. If they did, they would primarily be competing against Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street. They can’t do much to improve the investment process because all the broad indexes are very similar. Tweaking the market-cap thresholds or rebalancing schedules won’t meaningfully distinguish one from another. The effects of minor differences tend to wash out over the long run.

Fees are the only other way to differentiate. But again, upstarts can’t really move the needle. Competition has driven fees so low that ETFs tracking mainstream indexes are effectively free to the end investor. As an asset manager, you need to manage a tremendous amount of money to generate a reasonable amount of revenue and eke out profit. That works well for gigantic asset managers with trillions of dollars. It doesn’t work so well for smaller asset managers.

For those reasons, most ETF providers either gave up or never made an attempt to compete on price. And fees are so low that further cuts don’t really provide a noticeable advantage. Vanguard’s recent fee cuts in February 2025 and February 2026 went largely unanswered. Schwab made some minor reductions to four of its index-tracking funds in June 2025, and then again in June 2026. That was about it.

Then Corgi came along.

The asset management arm of an insurance startup is challenging conventional wisdom. Its basic plan appears to be undercutting the minuscule fees charged by the major asset managers. That means something along the lines of charging 0.03% for an ETF that will compete against incumbents charging 0.04%.

Corgi started by applying that philosophy to a lot of thematic, leveraged, and inverse ETFs, where the fee cuts can be larger. It’s been a slow start, though.

That said, Corgi has started to expand into broader indexes that form the core of a lot of investors’ portfolios—the area that Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street ETFs dominate. The last round of ETFs Corgi launched in mid-October 2026 consisted of 15 bond ETFs that track various segments of the bond market and look similar to what’s available from those larger asset managers.

Corgi currently has more than 200 ETFs trading on US exchanges. All were launched this year. There are more than 300 under consideration by the Securities and Exchange Commission that could start trading in the near future.

It’s an ambitious attempt. Could it work? Time will tell.

DRAM’s Forgettable Performance

Last Thursday provided yet another reminder that stocks are a risk asset. Vanguard Morningstar Total Stock Market ETF VTI and iShares Core S&P 500 ETF IVV both lost about 4.3% on Nov. 5, while Invesco QQQ Trust QQQ shed about 6.4%. There was also a lot of trading volume. More than $400 billion worth of ETF shares changed hands, making it the third-most heavily traded day for US ETFs of the past decade.

That Invesco QQQ lost more than iShares Core S&P 500 ETF or Vanguard Morningstar Total Stock Market ETF is not surprising. Large technology stocks were leading Thursday’s fall, and the Nasdaq-100 Index that Invesco QQQ tracks favors them more than the S&P 500 or broader US market. Nov. 5 marked a low point in the fund’s current drawdown that started in early October. It closed Thursday’s trading session down 14.7% from its peak. That isn’t too out of character for Invesco QQQ. It’s the fifth drawdown of more than 10% that Invesco QQQ has endured over the past three years.

Thematic ETFs that were all in on artificial intelligence and semiconductors fared even worse. Roundhill Memory ETF DRAM was down more than 18% on Nov. 5, and there’s a pattern playing out in its flows that’s all too familiar to thematic ETFs. Flows tend to rush in when performance is strong. But thematic ETFs tend to depend on a relatively small number of stocks. Poor diversification means day-to-day returns can be volatile. Eventually, the high rates of return top out, and the ETF goes through a drawdown. The decline can often be as dramatic as the rise, and the average dollar typically ends up losing money because of poor timing.