{"id":3953,"date":"2026-04-10T11:42:30","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T11:42:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.finznest.com\/blog\/blackrock-rips-page-from-hedge-fund-playbook-applies-it-to-etfs\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T11:42:30","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T11:42:30","slug":"blackrock-rips-page-from-hedge-fund-playbook-applies-it-to-etfs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.finznest.com\/blog\/blackrock-rips-page-from-hedge-fund-playbook-applies-it-to-etfs\/","title":{"rendered":"BlackRock rips page from hedge fund playbook, applies it to ETFs"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"SpecialReportArticle-ArticleBody-6\" data-module=\"ArticleBody\" data-test=\"articleBody-2\" data-analytics=\"SpecialReportArticle-articleBody-6-2\"><span class=\"HighlightShare-hidden\" style=\"top:0;left:0\"\/><\/p>\n<div role=\"region\" aria-labelledby=\"Placeholder-ArticleBody-Video-108287561\">\n<div role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" id=\"Placeholder-ArticleBody-Video-108287561\" class=\"PlaceHolder-wrapper\" data-vilynx-id=\"7000408830\" data-test=\"VideoPlaceHolder\">\n<div class=\"InlineVideo-videoEmbed\" id=\"InlineVideo-0\" data-test=\"InlineVideo\">\n<div class=\"InlineVideo-wrapper\">\n<div class=\"InlineVideo-inlineThumbnailContainer\"><span class=\"InlineVideo-videoButton\"\/><span\/><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"group\">\n<p>BlackRock is applying hedge fund strategies to its exchange-traded fund business. <\/p>\n<p>Jeffrey Rosenberg, the firm&#8217;s senior portfolio manager on the systemic fixed income team, has a leading role in the firm&#8217;s liquid alternatives ETFs \u2014 which use a long-short strategy in ETF wrappers.<\/p>\n<p>He contends the strategy provides valuable diversification amid the recent breakdown in the relationship between stocks and bonds. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The great old adage around fixed income is &#8216;my bonds go up when my stocks go down.&#8217; Now, we just went through a period in March with war risk where we clearly saw again on display&#8230; that doesn&#8217;t hold. And, really saw it in 2022,&#8221; Rosenberg told CNBC&#8217;s &#8220;ETF Edge&#8221; this week. &#8220;This entire post-Covid environment has really challenged that bedrock principle of the 60-40 portfolio that bonds are diversifying.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>According to Rosenberg, client demand for liquid alts ETFs is growing because there&#8217;s a desire to diversify your diversifiers. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re bringing the techniques that we&#8217;ve developed in the hedge fund side of our business, which primarily center around market neutral, long-short investing,&#8221; he added. &#8220;That&#8217;s the key kind of &#8216;a-ha moment&#8217; for ETF investors to realize most of what they have exposure to in the ETF ecosystem is some kind of beta exposure.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Rosenberg is a portfolio manager on two BlackRock liquid alts ETFs: the iShares Systematic Alternatives Active ETF (IALT) and the <span class=\"QuoteInBody-quoteNameContainer\" data-test=\"QuoteInBody\" id=\"SpecialReportArticle-QuoteInBody-4\">iShares Managed Futures Active ETF (ISMF)<span class=\"QuoteInBody-inlineButton\"><span class=\"AddToWatchlistButton-watchlistContainer\" id=\"-WatchlistDropdown\" data-analytics-id=\"-WatchlistDropdown\"><button class=\"AddToWatchlistButton-watchlistButton\" aria-label=\"Add To Watchlist\" data-testid=\"dropdown-btn\"><span class=\"AddToWatchlistButton-addWatchListFromTag\"\/><\/button><\/span><\/span><\/span>. As of April 8, the firm&#8217;s website shows IALT is up almost 8% so far this year while the ISMF is up nearly 5%.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What liquid alternatives bring to the table is the ability to look at other sources of return away from just market directionality,&#8221; said Rosenberg. <\/p>\n<p>He highlighted a major challenge investors face on the stock market side.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Our equity portfolios have been more and more dominated by the <span class=\"QuoteInBody-quoteNameContainer\" data-test=\"QuoteInBody\" id=\"SpecialReportArticle-QuoteInBody-5\">big, large cap tech winners,<span class=\"QuoteInBody-inlineButton\"><span class=\"AddToWatchlistButton-watchlistContainer\" id=\"-WatchlistDropdown\" data-analytics-id=\"-WatchlistDropdown\"><button class=\"AddToWatchlistButton-watchlistButton\" aria-label=\"Add To Watchlist\" data-testid=\"dropdown-btn\"><span class=\"AddToWatchlistButton-addWatchListFromTag\"\/><\/button><\/span><\/span><\/span>&#8221; said Rosenberg. &#8220;With that concentration is a loss of diversification and a loss of diversification value on the equity side. So, liquid alternatives can address both of these challenges to portfolio construction.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<h2 class=\"ArticleBody-subtitle\">&#8216;Something that&#8217;s going to zag when the market zigs&#8217; <\/h2>\n<div class=\"group\">\n<p>VettaFi&#8217;s Todd Rosenbluth still regards liquid alts ETFs as an emerging category. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Overall, this is still relatively small compared to traditional equity [and] traditional fixed income, but we are seeing advisors looking for something that&#8217;s going to zag when the market zigs,&#8221; the firm&#8217;s head of research said in the same interview. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"ArticleBody-googlePreferredSourceContainer\" data-module=\"GooglePreferredSource\" data-id=\"SpecialReportArticle-GooglePreferredSource-6\">Choose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BlackRock is applying hedge fund strategies to its exchange-traded fund business. Jeffrey Rosenberg, the firm&#8217;s senior portfolio manager on the systemic fixed income team, has a leading role in the firm&#8217;s liquid alternatives ETFs \u2014 which use a long-short strategy in ETF wrappers. He contends the strategy provides valuable diversification amid the recent breakdown in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3954,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2987,996,1652,1679,1678,2986,2142,2381],"class_list":["post-3953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-applies","tag-blackrock","tag-etfs","tag-fund","tag-hedge","tag-page","tag-playbook","tag-rips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.finznest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.finznest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.finznest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.finznest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.finznest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.finznest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3953\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.finznest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.finznest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.finznest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.finznest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}