Large Flows Into A Lesser Known Passive Fund Manager: Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA)

Dimensional Fund Advisors a pioneer in value tlted" passive funds is less known to the gerneral public. It's funds are available to retail investors either through a limited number of advisors, some annuities and some 401k plans.

from the WSJ 

Alongside Vanguard, Dimensional Is Getting Inflows Too

While the mutual fund giant Vanguard Group is nabbing the lion’s share of investor money pouring into “passively-managed” products like index funds, it’s not the only company benefiting.

Little talked-about Dimensional Fund Advisors, an Austin, Texas-based money manager with $380 billion in assets under management, happened to rank among the top five companies experiencing the highest inflows into passively managed products through July this year, according to the research firm Morningstar Inc.

The asset manager has long run a series of proprietary mutual funds that operate like index funds because they are highly diversified – sometimes investing in thousands of stocks, for example – and therefore spread risk, unlike a traditional mutual fund operated by a star manager, Morningstar says. They also have low turnover in their investments and are low cost

Here are numbers for the flows into passive ETFs and funds

Passive Fund Net Flows ($Millions)

Name	1-Mo	YTD	1-Yr
Vanguard	16.781	102.723	157.807
iShares/Blackrock	3.322	29.387	48.653
Dimensional Fund Advisors	2.296	16.771	25.932
First Trust	398	6.222	10.649
Guggenheim Investments	260	4.567	8.846
Fidelity Investments	838	9.023	8.516
Schwab ETFs	663	4.103	6.609
ProShares	614	2.873	4.837
TIAA-CREF Mutual Funds	267	1.635	2.589