Guide To ETF Providers: State Street Global Advisors

State Street Global Advisors (SSgA) is the asset management business of State Street Corporation (NYSE:STT), a financial services holding company founded in 1792 with offices in major financial centers worldwide. State Street Global Advisors is a registered investment advisor (RIA) with $2.1 trillion in assets under management, making it the second largest asset manager in the world (behind BlackRock). SSgA has investment centers in Boston, Hong Kong, London, Montreal, Toronto, Munich, Paris, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo and Zurich and offices in 27 other international cities.

SSgA currently offers 117 U.S. listed ETFs, providing exposure to major asset classes, as categorized by SSGA:

• U.S. Market Cap
  
  
• U.S. Style
  
  
• Sector/Industry
  
  
• Real Estate
  
  
• Commodities/Real Assets
  
  
• Active Asset Allocation
  
  
• International/Global
  
  
• Region
  
  
• Fixed Income

SSgA markets a series of ETFs are mostly called "SPDR" ETFs, which stands for S&P depositary receipts. The funds track various S&P indexes. One of the funds - the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) - is both the oldest and largest ETF, tracking the S&P 500. SPY has over $128 billion in assets, and approximately 144 million shares trade hands each day - making SPY the most actively traded ETF in the world.

Headquartered in the financial district of Boston, Massachusetts, State Street funds have expense ratios that range between 0.09 and 0.70%, with an average expense ratio of 0.36%.

Figure 9: State Street Global Advisors\' top five largest funds by AUM. Information current as of Feb. 8, 2013.

SEE: Building An All-ETF Porfolio