The Boston Behemoth is taking a stab at creating its own ETF-like structure for active investing.

Abigail Johnson Fidelity President, Chief Executive Officer

Today Fidelity [profile] filed for SEC approval for what Fido calls "exchange-traded active funds," or ETAFs for short. Chris Dieterich of Barron's picked up on the news.

Bloomberg, the Boston Business Journal, the Boston Globe, ETF.com, Reuters, and the Wall Street Journal also covered the news.

The idea behind the new structure is to combine the real-time trading and tax efficiency of ETFs with: a dodge of the closed-end fund issues around NAV-discounts; and a traditional-open-end-mutual-fund-like 30-day holdings disclosure delay, to help active PMs avoid giving away too much to potential frontrunners.

The Fidelity filing comes six months after another Boston-based mutual fund shop, Eaton Vance, debuted its first fund in a new ETF-like, active-manager-friendly fund structure.

The Fidelity filing also comes seven months after another fund firm, Legg Mason (not in Boston), invested in Precidian, which has been working on its own ETF wrapper for active managers.

Meanwhile, last month the SEC gave the go-ahead to BATS and the NYSE to create simplified standards for creating new, actively-managed ETFs.  

Edited by: Neil Anderson, Managing Editor


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