Lan Anh Tran: 2025 was a breakout year for active ETFs as they reached nearly 1.5 trillion in assets under management and 450 billion in total net inflow. The total number of active ETFs have risen to over 2,000 tickers, presenting a dizzying array of choices. As you prepare your portfolio for the year ahead, consider these three new active ETFs that we have been keeping an eye on. They all feature in our recently published Morningstar Prospects report, which highlights promising investments on our radar that have not yet received analyst coverage.
3 New Active ETFs on Our Radar
- Vanguard Core Tax-Exempt Bond VCRM
- T. Rowe Price Capital Appreciation Premium Income ETF TCAL
- John Hancock Disciplined Value International Select ETF JDVI
First up, Vanguard Core Tax-Exempt Bond ETF VCRM. Led by a duo of veteran municipal managers at Vanguard, this ETF boasts a wealth of supporting resources and a deep bench of analysts and traders. Lead managers Stephen McFee and Mathew Kiselak both bring decades of industry experience to the fund. They leverage a large team of over 20 research analysts and a dozen traders from Vanguard Municipal Group to construct this portfolio. The analysts provide both fundamental research and relative value recommendations where the traders help the managers execute trades in the fragmented municipal-bond market. Rather than taking outside bets to carve out an edge, this ETF employs a disciplined process to identify mispriced securities across sectors, state, and credit-quality buckets.
VCRM’s short track record has been encouraging. It outpays the category index, the Bloomberg Municipal Index, by simply 1 basis point annually between its November 2024 inception and January 2026. The ETF also claimed top-decile ranking in its category in 2025, its first full calendar year in existence, despite challenging conditions for municipal bonds.
Next up is a new offering from veteran manager David Giroux: T. Rowe Price Capital Appreciation Premium Income ETF TCAL, TCAL. A celebrated manager renowned for his stock picks, Giroux brings the same seasoned team and time-tested approach to this ETF as his successful mutual fund, T. Rowe Price Capital Appreciation. He leads a team of six supporting managers, most of whom rose through the ranks as long-term analysts to assume portfolio management responsibilities.
The managers identify companies with strong growth potentials, reasonable valuations, to craft the ETF stock sleeve. On top of a high-quality stock lineup, they write cover calls on individual companies to capture the core premiums and explore the difference in the implied volatility. The trade-off between income and upside can be a constant tug of war with covered core strategies, as investors typically must give up one for the other. An active managed covered core sleeve can give the managers more leeway to tip the scale dynamically in either direction, depending on expected market performance.
Last but not least, an ETF that graduated from our Prospect List into coverage last year: Silver-rated John Hancock Disciplined Value International Select ETF, ticker JDVI. With the recent revival of interest in international stocks, this ETF is a solid pick for investors looking for foreign exposure with a value tilt. This is a time-tested approach similar to the one that lead managers, Josh Jones and Chris Hart employing their long-standing mutual fund, John Hancock Disciplined Value International. Both managers have proved their mettle as veteran stock-pickers on international-focused strategies and bring decades of industry experience to this newly minted ETF. The managers narrow down the universe of eligible stocks with a quantitative screen, capturing companies with strong fundamentals and attractive valuations. The team leverages a team of 20-plus seasoned research analysts to conduct fundamental research on the eligible names, dissecting each stock’s balance sheets to arrive at a fair value estimate.
This ETF has been around since December 2023, providing a slightly longer track record than the two ETFs mentioned above. It got up to a rocky start in 2024, but made up for it with strong performance in 2025, as its preference for European names paid off. Long-term results on the managers’ other strategies also inspire confidence over the full market cycle.
Watch 3 Great ETFs for an IRA in 2026 for more from Lan Anh Tran.