How Are Private Equity ETFs Doing?

Do exchange-traded funds (ETF) designed to make private equity accessible to individual investors beat the market? To investigate, we consider four ETFs, as follows:

• • Invesco Global Listed Private Equity ETF (PSP) – invests in 40 to 75 private equity companies, including business development companies, master limited partnerships, alternative asset managers and other entities that are listed on a nationally recognized exchange.
  • VanEck BDC Income ETF (BIZD) – invests at least 80% of its total assets in securities associated with its benchmark (Business Development Company) index.
  • ProShares Global Listed Private Equity ETF (PEX) – invests in the most actively traded companies that directly hold private equity, or in instruments with similar economic characteristics.
  • ERShares Private-Public Crossover ETF (XOVR) – provides institutional-style access to the pre-IPO economy without closed-end premiums, lockups, or interval-fund gates.

We use Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund ETF (VTI) as the benchmark. We focus on monthly return statistics, along with compound annual growth rates (CAGR) and maximum drawdowns (MaxDD). Using monthly total returns for the four private equity ETFs and VTI as available through February 2026, we find that:

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