RIAs’ ETF adoption continued to expand across investment categories, issuers and funds in the third quarter of 2025, according to the RIA ETF Trends report from AdvizorPro.
Advisors stepped up the pace at which they added new ETFs compared to previous quarters, AdvizorPro found. Almost 59% of RIAs added new funds to their portfolios during the quarter, up from 57.8% the quarter prior. In contrast, only 18.6% decreased their ETF counts. RIAs’ average number of ETFs rose to 72.7 funds up from 69.9.
Advisors added an average of 17.54% more ETFs relative to their previous holdings during the quarter, and withdrew from an average of 7.74% of funds, according to AdvizorPro data. Based on average (21%) and median ETF turnover ratios (10.99%), AdvizorPro researchers believe that most RIAs took a measured approach to updating their ETF allocations, keeping the number of new ETFs low and withdrawing from only a few funds. The highest turnover in ETFs was concentrated among a few active RIAs.
However, RIAs leaned further into some of the in-vogue investment themes in the third quarter that correspond with secular trends, including AI, defense technologies, industrial reshoring and precious metals. They also continued to allocate to ETFs focused on digital assets, although they started noticeably expanding from primarily bitcoin ETFs to Ethereum funds, noted Michael Magnan, founder and CEO of AdvizorPro.
In fact, iShares’ Ethereum ETF (ETHA) and Fidelity’s Ethereum ETF (FETH) took the top two spots for the fastest growing funds among RIAs in the third quarter. The number of RIAs invested in EHTA rose by 112.43% quarter-over-quarter, to 376, while the number of RIAs holding FETH rose by 85.25% to 113.
“In the second quarter, Bitcoin dominated advisor interest,” Magnan wrote in an email. “In the third quarter, Ethereum-focused ETFs—ETHA, FETH, ETH—became the strongest growth engines across the RIA channel. That shift didn’t show up in prior quarters and suggests advisors are beginning to treat digital assets as more than a single-asset trade. The trend is reinforced by broader institutional signals as well—e.g. this week’s news that the Harvard endowment significantly increased its IBIT holdings. Even the most sophisticated institutions are increasing exposure in this space significantly, which is influencing how advisors think about client portfolios.”
AdvizorPro also found a visible shift in which issuers were gaining the most investors among RIAs. The data showed that the fastest-growing issuers’ spots were taken over by newcomers such as Fundstrat and First Eagle Investments within just one quarter. Fundstrat emerged as the ETF issuer experiencing the strongest growth within the RIA segment in the third quarter. The company saw an almost 56% jump in its number of RIA subscribers, to 170. First Eagle Investments RIA subscriber count was up 35.7%, NEOS Investment Management was up 19.52% and CoinShares was up 14.29%.
“The most notable shift [in the third quarter] was the complete turnover in ETF leadership,” Magnan wrote. “None of the second quarter’s fastest-growing ETFs reappeared in the third quarter, and nearly all of the fastest-growing issuers were new as well. The common thread is that ETFs continue to grow quarter-over-quarter, but the level of rotation shows how quickly RIAs are adapting to new products and responding to changing market signals rather than staying anchored to the same themes/issuers.”
Among the most popular new ETFs (those launched within the past three years) were NEOS Investment Management’s derivative income-focused SPYI (with a 19.05% increase in the number of RIAs invested in it, to 225), T. Rowe Price’s mid-cap blend vehicle TMSL (with a 14.67% increase, to 86 RIAs) and American Century Investments’ small value fund AVSC (with a 13.6% increase to 142 RIAs).
AdvizorPro relied on 13F filings, ETF statistics and its database of 4,774 RIAs to draw its conclusions.
