ETFs Are `Weapons of Mass Destruction,' FPA Managers Say

By Charles Stein

(Bloomberg) --Exchange-traded funds are "weapons of mass destruction" that have distorted stock prices and created the potential for a market selloff, according to the managers of the FPA Capital Fund.

"When the world decides that there is no need for fundamental research and investors can just blindly purchase index funds and ETFs without any regard to valuation, we say the time to be fearful is now," Arik Ahitov and Dennis Bryan, who run the $789 million fund, said in an April 6 letter to investors in the actively managed fund.

The flood of money into passive products is making stock prices move in lockstep and creating markets increasingly divorced from underlying fundamentals, the managers said. As the market moves ever higher, there's the potential for a sharp decline. The U.S. ETF market has about $2.7 trillion in assets, the majority in products that...