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ASSET MANAGEMENT DIGEST

A Publication Series on the US Fund Industry VOL. I · NO. 1 · AUGUST 2026
An oblique drawing of a city of office towers along a market street.

THE PRICE LINE

First Trust charges eight times as much; Vanguard's fee pool is six times as large

PAGE 2

THE FLOW LINE

Five giants took 84 percent of inflow — while three premium-priced firms kept growing

PAGE 5

THE SCALE LINE

Operating costs stop falling at $2B; management fees keep falling to below nine basis points

PAGE 7

THE COMPANY FILES

Vanguard, First Trust and Capital Group in full — and the Panel, every firm on one basis

PAGE 8

PREPARED AUGUST 2026INDUSTRY INTELLIGENCE FROM PRIMARY DISCLOSUREPRINT AND READ
ASSET MANAGEMENT DIGEST · AUGUST 2026THE PRICE LINE · P. 2

THE PRICE LINE

The Price of Management

First Trust earns 7.7 times as much per dollar managed. Vanguard’s fee pool is 6.2 times as large.

The same $100 billion of registered money implies $565 million a year for First Trust and $73 million for Vanguard. That spread collapses two different businesses to one rate: specialist products at one end, mass-market scale at the other.

But the firms do not manage the same $100 billion. Vanguard's $12.1 trillion registered book turns its bottom-of-the-column rate into an implied $8.8  billion annual fee pool — larger than First Trust's. Fidelity, priced near the middle, leads them all at $17.8 billion. Across the 21 firms, the filed schedules cover 73 percent of US registered-fund assets.

The reversal between Exhibits 1A and 1B is the business model. A manager can defend a premium on a smaller, particular lineup or drive a low rate across an enormous one; Capital Group adds a third route, selling the same portfolios through many channels. The firm rate is therefore not a quote for any one investor. It is an X-ray of how the manager chose to make money. Distribution and advice can be billed elsewhere, so the rate is not the investor's all-in price.

EXHIBIT 1A · FEE REVENUE PER $100B MANAGED$M / YEAR
First TrustFirst Trust: 565565Goldman AMGoldman AM: 527527ColumbiaColumbia: 513513T. Rowe †T. Rowe †: 501501Am. Century †Am. Century †: 498498J. HancockJ. Hancock: 490490PIMCO †PIMCO †: 483483MFSMFS: 464464PGIMPGIM: 457457FranklinFranklin: 455455JacksonJackson: 369369InvescoInvesco: 275275Fidelity †Fidelity †: 255255Capital GroupCapital Group: 241241JPMorganJPMorgan: 208208DimensionalDimensional: 199199BlackRockBlackRock: 163163NuveenNuveen: 141141Charles SchwabCharles Schwab: 125125Vanguard †Vanguard †: 7373State StreetState Street: 7373
EXHIBIT 1B · TOTAL IMPLIED FEE REVENUE$B / YEAR
Fidelity †Fidelity †: 17.817.8BlackRockBlackRock: 9.09.0Vanguard †Vanguard †: 8.88.8Capital GroupCapital Group: 8.78.7T. Rowe †T. Rowe †: 5.45.4JPMorganJPMorgan: 4.14.1InvescoInvesco: 3.53.5PIMCO †PIMCO †: 3.13.1FranklinFranklin: 2.32.3MFSMFS: 2.22.2DimensionalDimensional: 1.91.9Charles SchwabCharles Schwab: 1.91.9ColumbiaColumbia: 1.91.9PGIMPGIM: 1.81.8State StreetState Street: 1.81.8Am. Century †Am. Century †: 1.51.5J. HancockJ. Hancock: 1.41.4First TrustFirst Trust: 1.41.4Goldman AMGoldman AM: 1.31.3NuveenNuveen: 1.11.1JacksonJackson: 1.01.0

Each fund’s filed fee schedule × registered assets. † The schedule is filed as a range; the midpoint is drawn.

NUMBERS OF THE MONTH VINTAGE 2026-08

$82.1B

Annual fee pool implied by the panel's filed schedules and registered assets.

84%

Share of positive flow taken by BlackRock, Fidelity, JPMorgan, State Street and Charles Schwab.

$2B

Where operating savings stop — before management-fee discounts do.

ASSET MANAGEMENT DIGEST · AUGUST 2026THE PRICE LINE · P. 3

THE PRICE LINE · CONTINUED

Distribution Didn’t Disappear. It Changed Addresses.

Commission-paying share classes are still everywhere. Most of the money sits elsewhere — and some of the selling bill moved outside the fund.

A fund now reaches an investor by two payment rails. On one, the fund pays the seller through a 12b-1 charge taken from fund assets. On the other, the share class reports zero distribution expense and an adviser, wrap program or consultant bills outside it. The function survives; the payer and the address of the bill change.

Capital Group makes the switch visible. Its F-2 and F-3 shares carry no 12b-1 fee, yet they are built for fee-based accounts. The zero does not mean no intermediary was paid to bring the investor to the fund. It means the prospectus is no longer where that payment appears.

The old rail still occupies most of the lineup. It carries a minority of the money.

EXHIBIT 2 · THE COMMISSION CLASSES ARE MANY. THE MONEY IS ELSEWHERE.307 MULTI-CLASS FUNDS
SHARE OF CLASSESSHARE OF CLASSES: 55.8% carry a 12b-1 feeSHARE OF CLASSES: 44.2% carry no 12b-1 fee55.8%44.2%SHARE OF ASSETSSHARE OF ASSETS: 36.2% carry a 12b-1 feeSHARE OF ASSETS: 63.8% carry no 12b-1 fee36.2%63.8%

12b-1 paid inside the fundno 12b-1 inside the fund

Class assets are matched from shareholder reports to prospectus fee schedules; the comparison covers large multi-class funds more heavily than the full market.

Classes with an embedded commission are 55.8 percent of the measured classes and 36.2 percent of their assets. The median clean class holds $378 million, 4.5 times the commission-bearing class. Even the priciest class in a fund holds just 0.9 percent of its assets at the median. The top price is real, but it is a lightly occupied on-ramp for money that needs a commission built in — not the price where most of the book lives.

Capital Group, near the middle of page 2's price column, divides almost perfectly on the fund ledger: roughly 48 percent of matched assets pays a visible 12b-1 fee; roughly 51 percent sits in its R-6, F-2 and F-3 zero-12b-1 bucket. The remaining roughly 1 percent sits in other matched classes. That clean half mixes fee-based and institutional channels that the fund filing cannot separate from direct money. The industry did not converge on one lower-cost way to sell funds. It built two ways to pay the seller.

FOR THE FUND BUYER

“Clean” means no distribution commission inside the fund, not no intermediary and not no advice bill. A share-class expense and an advisory or wrap fee charged outside it are one bill in two places; either alone can rank two otherwise identical relationships backwards.

SEC PROSPECTUS XBRL · N-CSR CLASS ASSETS · CAPITAL GROUP SHARE-CLASS DISCLOSURES. 307-FUND PARSED SUBSET; LARGE MULTI-CLASS FUNDS ARE OVERREPRESENTED.

ASSET MANAGEMENT DIGEST · AUGUST 2026THE PRICE LINE · P. 4

THE PRICE LINE · CONTINUED

The Fund Expense Fell. The Relationship May Not Have.

Most of the decline came from assets moving among funds, not from existing funds cutting their own expense.

Held against 2021, every fund separates into repricing, movement in the asset base, and changes to the lineup.

EXHIBIT 3 · WHY THE FUND EXPENSE FELL2021 → 2025 · ASSET-WEIGHTED
money moved to lower-expense funds −7.43: 7.43 (60%)funds opened / closed −3.04: 3.04 (24%)fund expenses repriced −1.45: 1.45 (12%)interaction −0.54: 0.54 (4%)

money moved to lower-expense funds −7.43funds opened / closed −3.04fund expenses repriced −1.45interaction −0.54

The components sum to a 12.46bp decline in expenses charged through funds. Fees billed outside the fund are not in the calculation.

Fund repricing is the smallest component. The largest is money accumulating in funds that already charged less; funds entering and leaving the lineup come next. The average fell because the book changed underneath it, not because most funds cut their price. That distinction is also why page 2's column is not a pure record of repricing.

After page 3, the boundary matters. This calculation ends at the fund. A dollar can leave a commission-bearing class for a clean class inside a fee-based account: the fund expense falls while the advice bill reappears outside it. Moves between classes of the same fund are invisible here; an adviser’s separate invoice is always invisible.

The decline is real. It says expenses charged through registered funds fell. It does not establish that the investor’s whole relationship — product plus advice — fell by the same amount. The next object is where the registered assets moved, not what happened to the buyer’s complete bill.

WHAT THE BOUND EXCLUDES

The repricing term is an upper bound on existing funds cutting their price. Historical class weights are unavailable, so each fund is represented by its median class expense. Money moving from a higher-expense class to a lower-expense class inside the same fund is therefore invisible; if it accounts for part of the true same-fund decline, manager repricing accounts for less. The median-class proxy runs about a quarter high against true class-asset weighting. Nothing here measures advisory, wrap or consultant fees billed outside the fund, so the analysis cannot say how much of the visible decline was savings to the investor and how much was a change in billing address.

SEC PROSPECTUS XBRL · N-CSR SHAREHOLDER REPORTS · SHIFT-SHARE ON THE FIXED COHORT OF CLASSES PRESENT IN BOTH YEARS.

ASSET MANAGEMENT DIGEST · AUGUST 2026THE FLOW LINE · P. 5

THE FLOW LINE

Price Is a Hurdle, Not a Verdict

High price filters the field without sorting it. Three premium-priced firms grew while a low-priced firm and a mid-priced one lost assets.

If price alone decided the flow, the marks would fall cleanly from upper left to lower right. They do not. The exceptions reveal where the price test stops working.

EXHIBIT 4 · FEE REVENUE PER $100B, AGAINST NET FLOW$M / YEAR × % OF REGISTERED ASSETS
100200300400500600$0M+10%+5%-5%-10%0Vanguard: $73M / $100B · +0.6% of the bookVanguard ‡Fidelity: $255M / $100B · +4.5% of the bookFidelityBlackRock: $163M / $100B · +7.3% of the bookBlackRock ‡Capital Group: $241M / $100B · -2.6% of the bookCapital GroupState Street: $73M / $100B · +5.9% of the bookState StreetJPMorgan: $208M / $100B · +10.0% of the bookJPMorganCharles Schwab: $125M / $100B · +6.6% of the bookCharles SchwabInvesco: $275M / $100B · +2.5% of the bookInvescoT. Rowe: $501M / $100B · -6.3% of the bookT. RowePIMCO: $483M / $100B · +7.5% of the bookPIMCO ‡Franklin: $455M / $100B · -3.0% of the bookFranklinDimensional: $199M / $100B · +2.5% of the bookDimensional ‡Goldman AM: $527M / $100B · +6.3% of the bookGoldman AMNuveen: $141M / $100B · -5.0% of the bookNuveenMFS: $464M / $100B · -6.7% of the bookMFSColumbia: $513M / $100B · -5.2% of the bookColumbiaFirst Trust: $565M / $100B · +9.4% of the bookFirst TrustPGIM: $457M / $100B · -3.3% of the bookPGIMJackson: $369M / $100B · -8.7% of the bookJackson

Net flow across the ten filed months, 2025-05 to 2026-02, as a share of each firm's registered assets. ‡ marks an unusual filed month; the figure is drawn unchanged. American Century and John Hancock have gaps and are withheld.

Above $450 million of fee revenue per $100 billion, 5 of 8 complete-record firms are in outflow. Below $300 million, 8 of 10 are taking money in. Jackson sits between those lines and is losing assets faster than any firm shown. Price plainly matters: the higher it rises, the more the product has to overcome.

But it does not decide. First Trust, PIMCO and Goldman clear the high-price hurdle and grow. Nuveen sits near the bottom of the price column and still loses money (Panel, p. 15); Capital Group posts the panel's largest outflow from the middle, not the top — Capital Group's file is on page 13. A low fee cannot rescue every lineup, and a high one does not repel every dollar.

The useful question is therefore not whether price predicts every flow. It is how much money survives the hurdle and what earns the exception. Page 6 sizes the first answer; First Trust's file on page 11 takes up the second.

ASSET MANAGEMENT DIGEST · AUGUST 2026THE FLOW LINE · P. 6

THE FLOW LINE · CONTINUED

Five Giants Took 84 Percent of the Inflow

Five lower-priced giants drew 13.2 times as much as the three premium-priced exceptions.

The full dollar ledger turns page 5's exceptions into proportion.

EXHIBIT 5 · NET FLOWS ON THE COMMON TEN-MONTH WINDOW$B · 2025-05 → 2026-02
Capital GroupCapital Group: -93.7-94T. RoweT. Rowe: -68.4-68NuveenNuveen: -39.0-39MFSMFS: -31.5-31JacksonJackson: -24.0-24ColumbiaColumbia: -19.0-19FranklinFranklin: -15.0-15PGIMPGIM: -13.1-13Goldman AMGoldman AM: +15.9+16First TrustFirst Trust: +23.6+24Dimensional ‡Dimensional: +24.5+24InvescoInvesco: +31.6+32PIMCO ‡PIMCO: +48.5+49Vanguard ‡Vanguard: +73.0+73Charles SchwabCharles Schwab: +100.6+101State StreetState Street: +144.6+145JPMorganJPMorgan: +197.7+198FidelityFidelity: +315.3+315BlackRock ‡BlackRock: +405.1+405

11 firms report positive flow, $1,380 billion between them. The five largest platforms take $1,163 billion — the share named above. All five sit in the lower half of page 2's price column. The three expensive exceptions matter because they prove a premium can survive; at $88 billion combined, they do not change where the industry's volume went.

The losing side is concentrated too: Capital Group and T. Rowe account for 53 percent of the $304 billion leaving the eight firms in outflow. Yet five of those eight lose less in the second half than the first, while MFS, Columbia and Jackson worsen. This is not one retreat moving at one speed.

The shape is a barbell. Scale absorbs most of the money; a few particular offerings preserve a premium; broad active franchises occupy the difficult middle. Low cost wins the volume, not every contest. Vanguard is among the gainers, but its +0.6 percent of registered assets leaves it effectively flat; its file on page 9 explains the marked redemption month.

THE COMMON WINDOW, AND WHAT IS MARKED

Ten months is the longest complete run that keeps all 19 complete-record firms in the comparison, Vanguard included; it covers registered funds, not each firm's whole business. ‡ marks a filed month well outside that fund's own baseline: Vanguard carries $271B of redemptions across three index funds; PIMCO one cash fund; BlackRock elevated sales and redemptions together in one ETF; Dimensional one sales spike. All are drawn as filed. American Century and John Hancock have gaps and are withheld rather than estimated.

SEC N-PORT MONTHLY SALES AND REDEMPTIONS · AGGREGATED PER FAMILY ON THE TEN MONTHS EVERY FIRM SHOWN FILES IN FULL.

ASSET MANAGEMENT DIGEST · AUGUST 2026THE SCALE LINE · P. 7

THE SCALE LINE

Scale Stops Saving the Fund at $2 Billion. The Price Keeps Falling.

Operating cost flattens near 13 basis points. Management fees fall another 5.2-fold beyond the same line.

If the largest funds had lower fees only because fixed costs spread farther, both curves would flatten together. They do not.

EXHIBIT 6 · THE COST CURVE STOPS. THE PRICE CURVE KEEPS FALLING.BPS · MEDIAN BY FUND SIZE
050100150<$25M — management fee: 69bp69$25–100M — management fee: 66bp66$100–500M — management fee: 60bp60$0.5–2B — management fee: 55bp55$2–10B — management fee: 46bp46$10–50B — management fee: 25bp25>$50B — management fee: 8.8bp8.8<$25M — operating cost: 151bp151$25–100M — operating cost: 51bp51$100–500M — operating cost: 24bp24$0.5–2B — operating cost: 16bp16$2–10B — operating cost: 13bp13$10–50B — operating cost: 13bp13>$50B — operating cost: 14bp14<$25M$25–100M$100–500M$0.5–2B$2–10B$10–50B>$50B

management feeoperating cost

Operating cost excludes management and distribution. Management fee is the filed price of the manager; the largest buckets carry more index and institutional money, so the management-fee series (red) is a market outcome, not a pure scale effect.

Below $25 million, a fund spends 151 basis points simply operating before the manager or distributor earns a cent. By $2 billion that burden is 13 basis points, an 11.6-fold fall. Below the line, price is partly survival: the custodian, auditor and transfer agent must be paid from too little money.

Above $2 billion, that explanation expires. Operating cost runs 13, 13 and 14 basis points across the last three buckets. The management fee keeps falling: 46, then 25, then 8.8. The hundredth billion buys no further operating efficiency visible here; it still buys a markedly lower price.

The filings cannot assign that second discount to one cause. The largest funds contain more index strategies and institutional money, and large pools bring bargaining power. But production-cost dilution alone cannot explain a price curve that keeps falling after the cost curve stops. Page 2's paradox follows: Vanguard can charge near the floor and still build a fee pool six times First Trust's because nearly all its money already lives above the line.

FOR THE FUND BUYER

A small fund's high expense can be the arithmetic of keeping the vehicle alive. A giant fund's low management fee is not proof that its manager costs less to operate: after $2B, the operating savings are already spent. Strategy, share-class ownership and charges billed outside the fund still determine what the investor receives and pays; size alone says nothing about quality.

SEC PROSPECTUS XBRL · MANAGEMENT-FEE AND OTHER-EXPENSE TAGS · 14,082 SIZED SERIES, MONEY-MARKET AND FUND-OF-FUNDS EXCLUDED.

ASSET MANAGEMENT DIGEST · AUGUST 2026THE COMPANY FILES · P. 8

THE COMPANY FILES

Who Runs the Money

Three managers in full — each one a case this issue's argument runs through — and the Panel: every firm in the book, one row each, on the same measures.

An oblique drawing of a street of registry counters, where clerks file papers into cabinets and hand carts.

Vanguard

MUTUAL — OWNED BY ITS FUNDS

$73M per $100B managed · 99.5% of its money above the two-billion line

P. 9

First Trust

PRIVATE

$565M per $100B managed — the top of the column, and growing

P. 11

Capital Group

EMPLOYEE OWNED

−$94B on the common window, from the middle of the column

P. 13

The Panel

EVERY FIRM, ONE ROW

All twenty-one managers on the issue’s measures

P. 15

The three files are cases, not a sample: the industry claims on the market pages are measured on all twenty-one firms, and the Panel is where that measurement stands. All flows are quoted on the common window 2025-05 → 2026-02; a firm with a reporting gap inside it is marked, not estimated.

ASSET MANAGEMENT DIGEST · AUGUST 2026THE COMPANY FILES · P. 9

THE COMPANY FILES · PROFILE

Vanguard MUTUAL — OWNED BY ITS FUNDS

Vanguard is owned by the funds it runs, so it has no outside shareholder to earn a margin for. That single structural fact sets the price, and the price sets everything else on these pages — what it can afford to sell, who buys it, and why the money that arrives almost never leaves for cost.

ASSETS IN US-REGISTERED FUNDS

$12.07T

the largest registered book in the panel · 255 funds, 441 classes

WHAT THE MANAGER EARNS / WHAT THE CLIENT PAYS

4–11 / 5–13 bps

the lowest management fee of the twenty-one · the fee is filed as a range, not a rate · asset-weighted, from fund prospectuses

NET FLOWS, COMMON WINDOW

+$73B

6th largest inflow among the 19 firms with a complete record · 2025-05 → 2026-02, the longest run of months 19 of the 21 file in full

FEE REVENUE PER $100B MANAGED

$73M

20th of 21 · vs First Trust $565M and State Street $73M at the poles

‡ 2025-07 carries $271B of redemptions at up to 20× these funds' own baseline. The total above is drawn as filed; what it would be without that month is not estimated here.

WHAT IT SELLS

The six largest funds, and what the rest of the lineup looks like. Assets are the latest filed month-end for each fund, so the dates differ across rows by construction.

FUNDASSETS SHARE OF THE FIRM
Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund$1,992B16.5%
Vanguard 500 Index Fund$1,421B11.8%
Vanguard Total International Stock Index Fund$629B5.2%
Vanguard Total Bond Market Index Fund$387B3.2%
Vanguard Federal Money Market Fund$373B3.1%
Vanguard Total Bond Market II Index Fund$367B3.0%

Those six hold 43% of everything the firm manages. Behind them sit 249 more funds. Across the firm, 441 share classes average 1.7 per fund. Of those, 99 exchange-traded, 101 index-tracking, 9 money-market.

WHAT INVESTORS PAY

Every share class the firm files a fee for, in basis points. A class ladder is not a firm rate — the position tiles carry the asset-weighted figure, and these two scopes are never added together.

PER SHARE CLASSLOWEST MEDIANHIGHEST
Total expense19195
The manager's fee0878
Everything else01179

None of the 434 classes that report the line carries a distribution fee — a measured zero, not a gap.

SEC N-CEN · N-PORT · PROSPECTUS XBRL. FUND ASSETS ARE THE LATEST FILED MONTH-END PER FUND; FEE LINES ARE PER SHARE CLASS AS FILED.

ASSET MANAGEMENT DIGEST · AUGUST 2026THE COMPANY FILES · P. 10

VANGUARD · CONTINUED

WHAT INVESTORS RECEIVED

Filed monthly class returns, compounded over the twelve months to April 2026.

Across the 122 share classes that filed all twelve months, the middle one returned 13.4% over the year to April 2026, with a tenth below 3.2% and a tenth above 35.6%.

The classes behind that distribution charge a median of nine basis points, which is the shelf being described rather than an explanation of the returns.

A filed return is not a finding about skill. These classes are not a like strategy, no benchmark or peer set is drawn against them, funds that closed inside the window are absent, and the twelve months are one period. The number is what was filed; it is not evidence that anyone chose well.

THE TEN MONTHS, ONE AT A TIME

Net flows month by month. The flagged July sits in this series, and the argument about it is opposite; the bar is what the argument is about.

+29.5+5.4-275.2+30.3+17.8+32.5+59.9+30.7+78.0+64.1

1 of the ten months ran negative, and the second half is the stronger one. Months are filed, not estimated — every firm on this page is quoted on these same ten.

WHAT DRIVES THE BUSINESS

Where the fee base sits, and which part of the lineup is economic.

At the rate the tiles above report, this book earns roughly $8.8 billion a year, and 43% of the assets behind that sit in six funds. The rest of the fee base is spread across 249 others, which is where the cost of running a fund starts to matter.

Below $2B a fund sits on the steep part of the operating-cost curve (page 7). How much of this firm clears it — money-market funds and funds-of-funds excluded, so the count here is smaller than the fund count above.

ITS FUNDS 68%
ITS MONEY 99.5%

67 of its 207 funds sit below the line and they hold 0.5% of what it manages. No firm in the panel clears the line with more of its money. The median of the twenty-one is 90%, and First Trust is the far pole at 62%.

THE OVERLOOKED FACT

ONE MONTH THAT HAS NOT BEEN EXPLAINED

In July 2025 three Vanguard index funds — the 500 Index, Total Stock Market and Extended Market — filed $271 billion of redemptions between them, at four to twenty times their own trailing baseline. Every other month in the window runs between five and seventy-eight billion, positive. A spike that size confined to three funds, with sales unaffected, has the shape of a share-class or platform migration rather than investors leaving. That is not established: the figure is published as filed and flagged wherever it appears. The class-level detail either side of the month would settle it, and it is on the Watchlist.

For a reader: Vanguard's headline net flow for this window is materially depressed by a single month that may not represent investor behavior at all. The total is not a rankable number until the month resolves.

WHAT THE RECORD CANNOT TELL US

The figure Vanguard states for itself is a press number rather than a filed account, so the coverage above is measured against something it never filed. No filing observes who bought any of these funds or why, so nothing here describes the buyer. And what these funds report about duration, credit quality, securities lending and derivatives is filed every quarter in tables this publication does not yet read; the question is on the Watchlist, not answered here.

SEC PROSPECTUS XBRL FEE LINES · N-PORT MONTHLY CLASS RETURNS AND FUND ASSETS. RETURNS COVER CLASSES FILING ALL TWELVE MONTHS; FUND SIZES ARE THE LATEST FILED MONTH-END PER FUND.

ASSET MANAGEMENT DIGEST · AUGUST 2026THE COMPANY FILES · P. 11

THE COMPANY FILES · PROFILE

First Trust PRIVATE

First Trust charges more per dollar than any other manager in this panel and is still taking money in. It does that by selling things the low-cost shelf does not stock: hundreds of narrow, specific exchange-traded funds, most of them too small to be economic on their own.

ASSETS IN US-REGISTERED FUNDS

$0.25T

the smallest registered book in the panel · 339 funds, 333 classes

WHAT THE MANAGER EARNS / WHAT THE CLIENT PAYS

57.8 / 68–69 bps

the highest management fee of the twenty-one · asset-weighted, from fund prospectuses

NET FLOWS, COMMON WINDOW

+$24B

10th largest inflow among the 19 firms with a complete record · 2025-05 → 2026-02, the longest run of months 19 of the 21 file in full

FEE REVENUE PER $100B MANAGED

$565M

the top of the panel · vs State Street $73M at the other pole

WHAT IT SELLS

The six largest funds, and what the rest of the lineup looks like. Assets are the latest filed month-end for each fund, so the dates differ across rows by construction.

FUNDASSETS SHARE OF THE FIRM
First Trust Rising Dividend Achievers ETF$20B7.8%
First Trust SMID Cap Rising Dividend Achievers ETF$10B4.0%
First Trust Nasdaq Cybersecurity ETF$9B3.7%
FT Vest Laddered Buffer ETF$9B3.4%
First Trust RBA American Industrial Renaissance ETF$8B3.3%
First Trust Value Line Dividend Index Fund$8B3.2%

Those six hold 25% of everything the firm manages. Behind them sit 350 more funds. Across the firm, 333 share classes average 0.9 per fund. Of those, 306 exchange-traded, 121 index-tracking. It runs no money-market funds at all.

WHAT INVESTORS PAY

Every share class the firm files a fee for, in basis points. A class ladder is not a firm rate — the position tiles carry the asset-weighted figure, and these two scopes are never added together.

PER SHARE CLASSLOWEST MEDIANHIGHEST
Total expense29851245
The manager's fee1080110
Everything else001045

19 of the 336 classes that report the line carry a distribution fee, between 15 and 100 basis points.

SEC N-CEN · N-PORT · PROSPECTUS XBRL. FUND ASSETS ARE THE LATEST FILED MONTH-END PER FUND; FEE LINES ARE PER SHARE CLASS AS FILED.

ASSET MANAGEMENT DIGEST · AUGUST 2026THE COMPANY FILES · P. 12

FIRST TRUST · CONTINUED

WHAT INVESTORS RECEIVED

Filed monthly class returns, compounded over the twelve months to April 2026.

Across the 71 share classes that filed all twelve months, the middle one returned 10.9% over the year to April 2026, with a tenth below 4.4% and a tenth above 42.8%.

Barely a fifth of its share classes have a full year of filed returns behind them. On a shelf this size that is itself the finding: a young, fast-turning lineup where much of what exists today did not exist a year ago.

The same limits apply as on the first profile: one period, no benchmark, and closed funds absent.

THE TEN MONTHS, ONE AT A TIME

Net flows month by month — a specialist shelf taking money in steadily rather than in the bursts a single large fund produces.

+1.1+1.2+1.4+2.2+2.3+2.8+2.0+2.5+3.6+4.5

None of the ten months ran negative, and the second half is the stronger one. Months are filed, not estimated — every firm on this page is quoted on these same ten.

WHAT DRIVES THE BUSINESS

Where the fee base sits, and which part of the lineup is economic.

At the rate the tiles above report, this book earns roughly $1.4 billion a year, and 25% of the assets behind that sit in six funds. The rest of the fee base is spread across 350 others, which is where the cost of running a fund starts to matter.

Below $2B a fund sits on the steep part of the operating-cost curve (page 7). How much of this firm clears it — money-market funds and funds-of-funds excluded, so the count here is smaller than the fund count above.

ITS FUNDS 9%
ITS MONEY 61.9%

309 of its 338 funds sit below the line and they hold 38.1% of what it manages. No firm in the panel clears the line with less of its money. The median of the twenty-one is 90%, and Vanguard is the far pole at 99.5%.

THE OVERLOOKED FACT

WHAT THE PRICE IS ACTUALLY BUYING

No firm in this panel keeps as much of its money in small funds, and the middle firm keeps a tenth of what First Trust does there. That matters because of what the Scale Line measures: a fund of that size pays 24 to 51 basis points simply to operate — custody, audit, administration, transfer agency — before the manager has earned anything at all.

For a reader: the price of a First Trust fund is not mostly the manager's margin. A substantial part of it is the cost of running a small fund, and that cost does not fall until the fund grows.

WHAT THE RECORD CANNOT TELL US

First Trust publishes no firmwide total this publication can cite, so there is nothing to measure this book against and no coverage figure is drawn. No filing observes who bought any of these funds or why, so nothing here describes the buyer. The risk filings named on the first profile are unread here too.

SEC PROSPECTUS XBRL FEE LINES · N-PORT MONTHLY CLASS RETURNS AND FUND ASSETS. RETURNS COVER CLASSES FILING ALL TWELVE MONTHS; FUND SIZES ARE THE LATEST FILED MONTH-END PER FUND.

ASSET MANAGEMENT DIGEST · AUGUST 2026THE COMPANY FILES · P. 13

THE COMPANY FILES · PROFILE

Capital Group EMPLOYEE OWNED

Capital Group is employee-owned and sells only active management, through advisers, in more share classes per fund than anyone else here. It is building an exchange-traded business from nothing while the mutual funds underneath it shrink faster than any other firm's in this issue.

ASSETS IN US-REGISTERED FUNDS

$3.62T

4th of 21 in this panel · 155 funds, 1356 classes

WHAT THE MANAGER EARNS / WHAT THE CLIENT PAYS

25.0 / 34–137 bps

13th highest management fee of 21 · asset-weighted, from fund prospectuses

NET FLOWS, COMMON WINDOW

−$94B

one of 8 firms in outflow — the panel's largest · 2025-05 → 2026-02, the longest run of months 19 of the 21 file in full

FEE REVENUE PER $100B MANAGED

$241M

14th of 21 · vs First Trust $565M and State Street $73M at the poles

WHAT IT SELLS

The six largest funds, and what the rest of the lineup looks like. Assets are the latest filed month-end for each fund, so the dates differ across rows by construction.

FUNDASSETS SHARE OF THE FIRM
Growth Fund of America$328B9.0%
American Balanced Fund$264B7.3%
Washington Mutual Investors Fund$215B5.9%
Investment Co of America$166B4.6%
American Funds Fundamental Investors$154B4.2%
New Perspective Fund$153B4.2%

Those six hold 35% of everything the firm manages. Behind them sit 149 more funds. Across the firm, 1,356 share classes average 8.7 per fund. Of those, 23 exchange-traded, 2 money-market. It runs no index-tracking funds at all.

WHAT INVESTORS PAY

Every share class the firm files a fee for, in basis points. A class ladder is not a firm rate — the position tiles carry the asset-weighted figure, and these two scopes are never added together.

PER SHARE CLASSLOWEST MEDIANHIGHEST
Total expense068223
The manager's fee02365
Everything else01497

859 of the 1,316 classes that report the line carry a distribution fee, between 11 and 100 basis points.

SEC N-CEN · N-PORT · PROSPECTUS XBRL. FUND ASSETS ARE THE LATEST FILED MONTH-END PER FUND; FEE LINES ARE PER SHARE CLASS AS FILED.

ASSET MANAGEMENT DIGEST · AUGUST 2026THE COMPANY FILES · P. 14

CAPITAL GROUP · CONTINUED

WHAT INVESTORS RECEIVED

Filed monthly class returns, compounded over the twelve months to April 2026.

Across the 630 share classes that filed all twelve months, the middle one returned 20.5% over the year to April 2026, with a tenth below 6.0% and a tenth above 30.9%.

Inside a single fund the classes do not return the same thing. Across the 45 funds with at least four classes filing the full year, the best and worst differ by 1.30 points of return — and in every one of the 45, the class that returned most is the class that costs least. The gap is the fee difference carried through a year of 21% returns: a 1.07-point spread in price arrives as 1.30 points of outcome.

The same limits apply as on the first profile: one period, no benchmark, and closed funds absent.

THE TEN MONTHS, ONE AT A TIME

Net flows month by month. The outflow is the largest in the panel and the second half of the window is the shallower one.

-6.2-22.6-9.1-10.5-9.1-10.7-0.9-54.1+12.7+16.8

8 of the ten months ran negative, and the second half is the shallower one — the bleed is slowing, which is not the same as stopping. Months are filed, not estimated — every firm on this page is quoted on these same ten.

WHAT DRIVES THE BUSINESS

Where the fee base sits, and which part of the lineup is economic.

At the rate the tiles above report, this book earns roughly $8.7 billion a year, and 35% of the assets behind that sit in six funds. The rest of the fee base is spread across 149 others, which is where the cost of running a fund starts to matter.

Below $2B a fund sits on the steep part of the operating-cost curve (page 7). How much of this firm clears it — money-market funds and funds-of-funds excluded, so the count here is smaller than the fund count above.

ITS FUNDS 62%
ITS MONEY 99.1%

38 of its 99 funds sit below the line and they hold 0.9% of what it manages. 2nd of 21 by how much of its money clears the line, against a panel median of 90% and a range from First Trust's 62% to Vanguard's 99.5%.

THE OVERLOOKED FACT

THE SAME FUND AT SEVERAL PRICES

Capital Group runs the deepest class ladder in the panel, more than half again the next firm's, and two thirds of those classes carry a distribution fee, as the previous page shows. That is what an adviser-sold shelf looks like in the filings: one portfolio, offered at several prices, and which price an investor pays depends on how they came to buy it rather than on what they bought.

For a reader: the fund and the price are separate decisions here. Two people can own the same Capital Group portfolio and pay materially different amounts for it, and the difference is compensation for distribution, not for management.

WHAT THE RECORD CANNOT TELL US

Capital Group publishes no annual account, so the check on its stated total is its adviser's Form ADV, which files $3.32T of regulatory assets against the $3.62T here — a gap this publication has not resolved. No filing observes who bought any of these funds or why, so nothing here describes the buyer. The risk filings named on the first profile are unread here too.

SEC PROSPECTUS XBRL FEE LINES · N-PORT MONTHLY CLASS RETURNS AND FUND ASSETS. RETURNS COVER CLASSES FILING ALL TWELVE MONTHS; FUND SIZES ARE THE LATEST FILED MONTH-END PER FUND.

ASSET MANAGEMENT DIGEST · AUGUST 2026THE PANEL · P. 15

THE PANEL

Every Firm, One Row

The twenty-one managers the market pages measure, on the measures this issue ran. Where a firm has a file this month, its row says so.

FIRMREGISTEREDFEE / $100BNET FLOW · $BABOVE $2BCOVERAGE
VanguardFILE · P. 9MUTUAL — OWNED BY ITS FUNDS$12.07T$73M †+73 ‡99.5%93%
FidelityPRIVATE$6.98T$255M †+31595.4%76%
BlackRockLISTED · NYSE: BLK$5.51T$163M+405 ‡95.0%34%
Capital GroupFILE · P. 13EMPLOYEE OWNED$3.62T$241M-9499.1%95%
State StreetLISTED · NYSE: STT$2.45T$73M+14596.7%38%
JPMorganLISTED · NYSE: JPM$1.97T$208M+19894.5%38%
Charles SchwabLISTED · NYSE: SCHW$1.52T$125M+10197.6%—
InvescoLISTED · NYSE: IVZ$1.28T$275M+3289.5%52%
T. Rowe PriceLISTED · NASDAQ: TROW$1.08T$501M †-6893.7%42%
DimensionalPRIVATE$0.97T$199M+24 ‡94.5%—
NuveenOWNED BY TIAA$0.78T$141M-3988.7%—

Flows on the common window 2025-05 → 2026-02. † The fee is filed as a range; the midpoint is drawn. ‡ A month inside the window carries sales or redemptions well above that fund’s own baseline; the filed figure is drawn unchanged. Not published — the filed monthly series has a gap inside the window. Coverage is the registered book against the firm’s own published total — net of internal fund-of-funds where that is measured, gross otherwise; — means the firm publishes no total we can cite. Above $2B excludes money-market and fund-of-funds.

SEC N-CEN · N-PORT · PROSPECTUS XBRL · COMPANY REPORTS WHERE FILED · FLOWS ON THE COMMON TEN-MONTH WINDOW EVERY FIRM SHOWN FILES IN FULL, EXCEPT WHERE MARKED.

ASSET MANAGEMENT DIGEST · AUGUST 2026THE PANEL · P. 16

THE PANEL · CONTINUED

FIRMREGISTEREDFEE / $100BNET FLOW · $BABOVE $2BCOVERAGE
PIMCOOWNED BY ALLIANZ$0.65T$483M †+49 ‡76.2%—
Franklin TempletonLISTED · NYSE: BEN$0.50T$455M-1576.8%28%
MFSOWNED BY SUN LIFE$0.47T$464M-3190.2%—
PGIMOWNED BY PRUDENTIAL$0.40T$457M-1382.8%27%
Columbia ThreadneedleOWNED BY AMERIPRISE$0.36T$513M-1974.8%50%
John HancockOWNED BY MANULIFE$0.30T$490MNot published70.7%—
American CenturyPRIVATE — FOUNDATION-CONTROLLED$0.29T$498M †Not published76.8%—
Jackson (JNL)LISTED · NYSE: JXN$0.28T$369M-2467.5%75%
Goldman Sachs AMPART OF GOLDMAN SACHS$0.25T$527M+1677.1%7%
First TrustFILE · P. 11PRIVATE$0.25T$565M+2461.9%—

Flows on the common window 2025-05 → 2026-02. † The fee is filed as a range; the midpoint is drawn. ‡ A month inside the window carries sales or redemptions well above that fund’s own baseline; the filed figure is drawn unchanged. Not published — the filed monthly series has a gap inside the window. Coverage is the registered book against the firm’s own published total — net of internal fund-of-funds where that is measured, gross otherwise; — means the firm publishes no total we can cite. Above $2B excludes money-market and fund-of-funds.

SEC N-CEN · N-PORT · PROSPECTUS XBRL · COMPANY REPORTS WHERE FILED · FLOWS ON THE COMMON TEN-MONTH WINDOW EVERY FIRM SHOWN FILES IN FULL, EXCEPT WHERE MARKED.

ASSET MANAGEMENT DIGEST · AUGUST 2026THE WATCHLIST · P. 17

THE WATCHLIST

Open Questions, Dated

What this issue could not close, when it was left open, and what decides it. Each item returns here until it does.

CORRECTIONS

None — this is the first issue. A figure shown to be wrong is corrected here in the next issue, dated, stating what was wrong and what is right.

THE WATCHLIST CARRIES DATED OPEN QUESTIONS; AN ITEM LEAVES ONLY BY BEING ANSWERED ON A PAGE OR WITHDRAWN IN PRINT.

ASSET MANAGEMENT DIGEST · AUGUST 2026ABOUT THIS PUBLICATION · P. 18

APPENDIX

What This Is, and How a Number Gets On the Page

A monthly reading of the US fund industry taken entirely from what its firms are required to file. Three questions an issue, asked of the industry, taken into three managers in full, and measured for every firm in the Panel.

Every issue runs on three questions and nothing else. The market pages measure them across the industry; three company files then take them into actual product lineups; and the Panel holds every firm's row on the same measures, so no firm leaves the book. The questions rotate: what stays constant is that there are three, that each earns its pages, and that a finding which is not one of them waits for the issue where it is.

The sources are the filings themselves — N-CEN, N-PORT and the prospectus XBRL that every US-registered fund lodges with the SEC, read in bulk, plus the firms' own reports where they file them. Nothing here is surveyed, licensed or modeled. Where a figure comes from a firm's own account rather than a filing, the page says so and names the firm's own words for what it is measuring, because the industry does not agree on what assets under management means.

THE PERIMETER

These filings cover US-registered funds — nearly all of some houses, less than a tenth of others. Separate accounts, collective trusts, private funds and non-US vehicles file nothing here. Every company file, and every row of the Panel, carries how much of that firm the filings actually see. And no filing observes the buyer of a fund; nothing in this publication claims to know who they are or what they wanted.

THE RULES

Cross-firm figures are quoted on one window, stated on the face. Where two sources disagree, the figure is withheld rather than averaged. A number that measures part of a book is written as a bound, not a point. A zero that was measured reads differently from one that was never measured. And every comparison — highest, deepest, rarest — is checked against the other twenty before it ships.

HOW IT IS MADE

Prepared monthly from primary public disclosure. Research, checks and production are AI-assisted end to end; every number is machine-verified before print. The next issue is September 2026.

Corrections and questions: izzy@neza-ai.co. A figure shown to be wrong is corrected in the next issue and the correction is stated, not quietly absorbed.

SEC N-CEN · N-PORT · PROSPECTUS XBRL · N-CSR · FORM ADV · COMPANY REPORTS WHERE FILED.