BlackRock is set to ring in the new year with some new rungs for bond ladders.

Late last week, the firm filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission for at least 10 additional iBonds ETFs in its iShares line. The products would add new target maturities in existing categories, including munis, corporates, Treasurys and high yield. The product extensions follow other bond-ladder ETFs added this year by State Street and Vanguard. It all hints that, in a declining-interest-rate environment, advisors may be keen on locking in the highest possible rates they can for clients, particularly those at or near retirement.

“It’s definitely not a high-margin product for asset managers. But if they can do it at scale, when rates are in a good place for building ladders, it really helps cultivate client relationships,” said Cindy Zarker, client relationship manager at Fuse Research. That’s particularly the case, “when there’s a lot of money on the sidelines,” she said.

The Outcome Is Income

Bond ladders were all but dead a few years ago, when interest rates were extremely low, Zarker noted. Their increasing appeal in the exchange-traded fund format is happening not only as rates are still relatively high by recent standards, but more importantly as more people than ever are nearing retirement age. That’s the “peak 65” phenomenon the retirement services industry has trumpeted, with an estimated 11,000 or more people turning 65 every day in 2025.

In October, State Street prepped some new high-yield bond ETFs as part of its MyIncome bond ladder suite that debuted last year. Then in November, the elephant in the room, Vanguard, filed for a roster of 10 corporate bond ETFs with maturities ranging from 2027 to 2036 and fees of 8 basis points. The firms are competing with the likes of Invesco and BlackRock, whose respective $28 billion BulletShares and $51.6 billion iBonds series are the biggest on the market, according to data from Morningstar Direct. BlackRock did not comment on the new iBonds ETF filings.

The forthcoming iBonds products include:

• Four term muni ETFs set to mature in December 2032 to 2035.
• One term corporate bond ETF maturing in December 2036.
• Three term Treasury ETFs maturing December 2036 to 2056.
• A high-yield and income ETF maturing in 2033, as well as a TIPS ETF maturing in October 2036.

Making a List, Checking It Twice: More asset managers want to build out target-maturity fixed income products, per data from Cerulli. That firm found 42% of asset managers interested in “customized fixed-income solutions” for clients in 2025, up from 35% who said the same in 2023. Bond-laddered ETFs are more accessible than using separately managed accounts, Fuse’s Zarker said. “It gives the advisor some flexibility in going downmarket,” she said. “For the mass market, the ETF works well.”

Two years ago, Bloomberg Intelligence analysts predicted global ETF assets would hit $35 trillion by 2035. They’re probably going to come up a bit shy.

With more than $1.4 trillion in global flows, more than 1,000 product launches and US share trading volumes reaching nearly $60 trillion all in this year alone, it’s safe to say ETFs had a pretty successful 2025. Today, global assets are about to top $20 trillion, and that momentum doesn’t seem to be slowing down. “At this rate, we’re going to hit our number seven years ahead of schedule,” Bloomberg Intelligence senior analyst Eric Balchunas said at a conference last week. “Vanguard is going to take $400 billion in this year. That’s $1.5 billion a day. What time is it? It’s 1 o’clock. They’ve already taken in $950 million.”

False Narrative

Despite a noisy market backdrop filled with tariffs and calls to “sell America” or pivot away from the top-heavy S&P 500, most investors didn’t act on those narratives. As a result, the ETF industry surged. “It almost seemed like some people were wish-casting the stock market to fail this year,” Balchunas said.

He argued that ignoring the Mag 7 means also ignoring some 850 other companies that the group has collectively acquired. “YouTube would be, like, the 20th-biggest stock if it were spun off [from Google],” he said, adding that active managers who rotated into lower-valuation stocks and small cap funds underperformed.

Into the Future. Balchunas expects some industry headwinds in 2026, but remains broadly optimistic. One major driver is that many mutual-fund firms are still not offering ETFs. “Look at the flows out of equity mutual funds this year,” he said. “It went from bad to worse. Negative $1 trillion is no joke.” With persistent outflows, more firms are feeling pressure to adopt the recently approved ETF share class, he said.

With the surge of new issuers and product launches — even though many will inevitably close — Balchunas sees continued innovation ahead. “You want an industry to feel creative,” he said. “This is capitalism. It’s weird people dump on this.” As for possible disruptors like direct indexing or tokenized products, Balchunas isn’t concerned. “You can just go on your phone and buy anything under the sun for almost no fee with an ETF,” he said. “It’s hard to disrupt that.”

Wall Street has a new nighttime routine, and it’s not about remembering to wear a retainer.

A new ETF would hold bitcoin products only during overnight hours after the markets close, shifting into short-term US Treasuries during the day, according to a filing last week with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The goal is to capitalize on bitcoin’s performance during the night and slumps during the day. The strategy, called the Nicholas Bitcoin and Treasuries AfterDark ETF (NGHT), is the latest intersection of digital assets and traditional finance. But some experts warned that the fund may let traders take advantage of the predictable and forced buys and sells.

“[W]e took a 24/7 permissionless asset and somehow invented a night-shift ETF for it,” a crypto influencer wrote on X using the handle Blackthorne. “The real alpha is not owning time slices of bitcoin, it’s front‑running the tourists who think they can.”

Bitcoin After Dark

The idea behind the strategy is that investors would have higher returns by only trading bitcoin assets at night. For example, if an investor held the iShares Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) only during after-hours trading, performance would be up 222% since January of last year, according to data from Bespoke Investment Group. In the same filing, Nicholas Financial also proposed a fund that would factor in time of day to its trading strategy, called the Nicholas Bitcoin Tail ETF (BHDG).

The company’s other funds, however, have had mixed results this year:

• FIAX, a fixed-income alt fund, is down 4%.
• GIAX, a global equity and income fund, has declined by 11%.
• BLOX, a crypto income ETF, has lost 1%.

Crypto All Day, Every Day. Crypto strategies — from memecoin funds to crypto indexes — are flourishing under a new, laxer regulatory environment, with the SEC recently signaling its support for new spot crypto products.

“I think the industry is maturing,” head of sector and industry research at VettaFi Roxanna Islam told ETF Upside. “Advisors and investors are seeing the value of diversification within the crypto space, not just using it to make single asset bets. So issuers are starting to look to diversify more among their crypto holdings.”