Hedge funds are loading up on these 17 ETFs

REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

ETFs, or exchange-traded funds, are emerging as extremely popular investments.

The funds are designed to track a specific set of stocks, commodity or another group of assets. The idea is that investors can diversify their portfolios by simply investing in a single fund, rather than each of the individual assets the fund invests in.

Investors have been pouring money into ETFs recently, sometimes billions of dollars a week.

The combined investment in ETFs was recently measured at $2.7 trillion. As of February 2, passive investments like ETFs and index funds accounted for 28.5% of assets under management in the US. That share is expected to grow to more than 50% by 2024 at the latest, according to a Moody's forecast.

ETFs are not just popular for small and individual investors, as hedge funds are big investors in the funds as well, according to a report by Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

The report, authored by Jue Xiong and Stephen Suttmeier, ranked 25 exchange-traded funds owned by hedge funds by the size of the investment by hedge funds in the ETFs. The ETFs cover everything from equity markets to gold.

Below, the top 17 funds are listed in net market value of hedge funds' investments.

Read below to find out which funds made the list...