Poll of the Week: Will ETFs play a bigger role in your portfolio next year?

The Australian ETF market has quietly notched another major milestone. Assets have climbed to $315 billion, up 33% in the past year alone, as more investors make ETFs the backbone of their portfolios.

There are now more than 420 ETFs on the ASX and Cboe; everything from low-cost index funds to active strategies, income-focused options, commodities, bond ladders, thematics and alternatives.

What started as a simple way to track the ASX 200 has become a fully fledged toolkit for building portfolios. And in my conversations with several CEOs across the industry, a few themes keep coming up:

• Rising comfort with global diversification
• Strong demand for low-cost investment options (particularly from super funds trying to prove they’re charging lower fees)
• Rapid adoption of adviser-managed model portfolios
• A wave of thematic interest in AI, energy transition, cybersecurity and uranium

Put simply: there’s more product, more choice and more investor education than ever before — and ETFs look set to play an even bigger role in portfolios heading into 2026.

So this week, we want to hear how Livewire readers are thinking about them.