Hot Pimco Total Return ETF switches up ticker

Less than a month after its launch, the Pimco Total Return ETF (TRXT) is getting a new ticker symbol. Pacific Investment Management Co. LLC said last week that it is changing the ticker symbol of the exchange-traded fund to BOND, effective Wednesday. “Our aim is to enable investors to access the Pimco Total Return ETF easily and conveniently, and we believe that renaming the NYSE ticker to BOND is another step toward achieving that objective,” Bill Gross, the fund's portfolio manager and co-chief investment officer of Pacific Investment Management Co. LLC, said in a statement. The Pimco Total Return ETF has grown to more than $250 million in assets since its March 1 launch. It was the most anticipated launch of an actively managed ETF, thanks to the star power of Mr. Gross and its attachment to the largest mutual fund in the world, the $250 billion Pimco Total Return Fund (PTTAX). Mr. Gross helped stoke the fanfare by declaring that he expects the ETF to follow in PTTAX's footsteps and become the largest in the world. Actively managed ETFs have yet to generate much investor interest, and both investors and industry figures alike are watching BOND to see if it can buck that trend. So far, the ETF has lived up to its reputation. Although 26 days doesn't make a track record, the Pimco Total Return ETF had outperformed the Barclays Aggregate Bond Index by 1.7 percentage points from its launch through last Tuesday. The ETF even outperformed the mutual fund version by 1.5 percentage points. The difference in performance between the ETF and mutual fund versions was expected, though no one could have been sure how much the two strategies would differ or which would perform better. The reason for the divergence in performance is that the mutual fund version uses derivatives while the ETF version cannot do so. The Securities and Exchange Commission issued a moratorium on ETFs' using derivatives in 2010 while it further researched the area. The moratorium still hasn't been lifted, and last month at the Investment Company Institute's Mutual Fund and Investment Management Conference, Eileen Rominger, director of investment management at the SEC, hinted that there is no end to the moratorium in sight. [email protected]