US-listed ETF flows beat 2025 full-year record in September, State Street says

US-listed ETFs broke their full-year flow record on the last day of September, a $13 billion day that took the month to $151 billion and the year to $1.54 trillion, according to State Street Investment Management's tally as reported by ETF Express, clearing the $1.52 trillion set across all of 2025 with a full quarter still in hand. That leaves the record itself the least useful figure in the release; the number to watch is State Street's own full-year forecast of $2.3 trillion.

Getting there requires roughly $760 billion in the fourth quarter, about $253 billion a month, against a monthly average of $171 billion through September and a $513 billion average quarter so far; State Street says the forecast remains firmly within reach, but the arithmetic asks the next three months to run well above the first nine.

Where the money is landing is less dramatic than the headline: low-cost core equity and fixed income funds have taken nearly $700 billion this year and are on a pace to pass $1 trillion in annual inflows, which State Street says would be a record. Active ETFs have gathered a record $574 billion, more than $60 billion of that in September, while the core money is concentrated in a few tickers, a lower-fee business than the active haul sitting beside it. Both grew at once: the year that made plain beta cheapest also made the fee-bearing version of it mainstream.

Underneath the annual figures runs the migration State Street keeps describing and the flows keep confirming. Over the past decade, US-listed ETFs have taken in $7.8 trillion while mutual funds have shed $3 trillion, a gap that lets the firm call ETFs the primary vehicle for portfolio construction without much argument from the numbers.

The newest record inside the record is the shortest-dated: short-term government bond ETFs have pulled in a record of roughly $100 billion this year, $19 billion of it in September, with State Street pointing to demand for short-duration exposure in a tighter policy environment. This publication argued in September that the year's bond record is a front-end parking trade, cash substitutes rather than a view on the curve. September's haul does not change that reading, but it does enlarge the position that gets tested the moment the policy backdrop that drew it in starts to move.