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BlackRock Looks to Take ETF Volume Crown from State Street

Ron Day

Wed, Jun 18, 2025, 7:00 AM 2 min read

State Street, whose SPDR business is the third-largest U.S. ETF issuer by assets behind BlackRock’s iShares and The Vanguard Group, controls 31% of U.S. exchange-traded fund trading volume, Bloomberg ETF Analyst Athanasios Psarofagis wrote. While rival BlackRock holds 25%, its share is growing faster thanks to trading in the iShares Bitcoin ETF Trust (IBIT), its spot Bitcoin fund, and the iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (IVV).

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Volume is critical in the ETF business where the three largest funds, the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO), the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY) and IVV charge rock-bottom fees and count on huge assets to generate income. The $607.4 billion SPY, which this year lost its title as the world’s largest ETF to the $679.8 billion VOO, is the most expensive among the world’s three biggest ETFs.

“BlackRock has steadily narrowed the gap and is on track to take the No. 1 spot,” Psarofagis wrote.

VOO has become the largest ETF due to winning the most investor money this year, hauling in a net $80.9 billion while the other two big funds have had outflows. Still, SPY typically does more volume: Last week, 585 million shares traded, crushing VOO’s 67.8 million and IVV’s 66.8 million, according to FactSet data on etf.com.

IBIT, the fastest-growing ETF on record, had volume of 339.7 million shares last week.

IBIT One-Month Price and Volume—Source: FactSet

Volume overall has grown “dramatically” in the past few years, and now about $13 trillion trades each quarter, Psarofagis wrote. The top 10 ETFs account for 44% of all volume and, while that’s concentrated, it’s actually broadened from a peak of 51%, he said.

Analysts have speculated that IVV may soon surpass SPY to become the second-largest ETF.