T. Rowe Price may bring actively managed ETFs to market

T. Rowe Price Group Inc. is planning to bring actively managed exchange-traded funds to the market. The plan to offer nontransparent actively managed funds, disclosed in filings with securities regulators, marks the mutual fund provider's early steps toward making inroads in the faster-growing ETF market segment. The products also are an attempt to popularize using ETFs for active fund management, without complete disclosure of the trades made by the fund managers. Most ETFs today are fully transparent passive investments, meaning they disclose their underlying holdings and track an index. Some active fund managers would like to withhold disclosure to enable more-strategic investing. The Baltimore-based fund manager has not launched any ETFs yet, and it may choose not to do so even if it receives approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission. There are currently more than $1.5 trillion in U.S.-traded ETF assets, according to XTF Inc., an analytics service.