Anthony Macdonald

So we're talking about the rise of ETFs in Australia, but this is a global story.

And investors are choosing them as a cheaper way to implement their ideas instead of giving money to an external fund manager who might charge them, you know, 50%.

50 basis points a year to do it, they can get their idea invested via an ETF for a fraction of the cost and think that's good enough to do the job.

There was this report out from the stockbroker Citi last week or the week before, James, and it's talking about US $25 trillion.

worth of these active etfs by the end of the decade right and we're at about 10 trillion now and that 10 trillion now is way more than i thought it would be five years ago so its point is these things are just growing exponentially and they're having a huge impact on markets companies are trying to get their heads around it i mean it's a big reason why we're getting some stocks that are falling off a cliff on what seem like maybe reasonably small or moderate earnings downgrades

So investors, it's changing the way they invest, everyone from big super funds down through to everyday retail investors.

These ETFs have just opened up new ways of thinking, and it's all part of the evolution of capital markets.

Well, in the near term, it's definitely hurt them, right?

And it's hurt their performance in the short and medium term.

Longer term, this should all work itself out.

You would think that over the longer term, these sort of fundamental ideals that they invest along should correct and the passive money will follow them and it should all work out in the fund manager's favor.

But we're just not seeing that yet.

And we're sort of maybe five years or more into this story and the active fund managers are under more pressure than ever.

And unless things start going their way pretty soon, it feels like it's going to get a whole lot worse.

Firmus was trying to let the genie out of the bottle, and boy, he did it.

This racy AI factory builder, you know, Bitcoin miner wannabe not that long ago, it's storming towards an initial public offering and listing on the ASX.

It's created immense paper gains for its founders and seed investors and a handful of

fund managers, and it wants to turn those into realisable wins for all involved.

But we won't have a prospectus out for another couple of months, but the way these things work, James, is companies like Firmus, they have to go out and start meeting investors early, telling their story well ahead of time, so those investors can go out and do their own work, start thinking about it, start thinking about where something like Firmus may fit inside their portfolios, and it just gets the IPO ball rolling.

So Firmus has taken this