State Street Global Advisors and Vanguard Advisors dominated the ETF managed portfolio landscape during the first quarter with both of them seeing their AUM rise more than $1 billion in their ETF strategist offerings.

Chicago-based investment research specialist Morningstar just released its "Morningstar ETF Managed Portfolio Landscape Report" for the first quarter of 2017. Ben Johnson, director of global ETF research, penned the report.

The top ETF strategist of the first quarter was State Street, generating $1.268 billion in net asset growth, M* estimates. Coming in second was Vanguard with $1.177 billion in net asset growth and trailing close behind were: BlackRock Inc., with an estimated growth of $802 million; Richard Bernstein Advisory, with an estimated growth of $761.5 million; and Clark Capital Management Group, with an estimated growth of $487.4 million.

On a relative basis however, Richard Bernstein placed first in terms of percent growth, increasing its total ETF strategist AUM by 37 percent the first quarter. State Street comes in second with a 23 percent increase, and Vanguard third, with an 18 percent increase. WestEnd Advisors, BlackRock, and Swan Global Investments all tie for fourth place with a 16 percent incease each. Finally in fifth place was Clark Capital who increased its total ETF strategist AUM by 11 percent.

On the flip side however, despite AUM increases for most of the ETF strategist in the industry, three of them experienced AUM dips the first quarter. The firm that dipped the most was Windhaven Investment Management, slipping an estimated $501.5 million in AUM. The second was Cougar Global Investments whose AUM shrunk $62.2 million in AUM, and third was Stadion Money Management, whose AUM slipped by $61.4 million.

In terms of relative losses, the order is exactly the same. Windhaven comes in first, with an estimated 6 percent slip in its AUM at the end of the first quarter. Cougar comes in second with a 4 percent slip and Stadion comes in third with only a 2 percent slip.

Industry wide, despite 3 of the 25 notable firms experiencing AUM drops, there was an estimated total net growth of $5.845 billion in assets within the portfolios of ETF strategists. This amounts up to an industrywide increase of 8 percent by the end of the first quarter.  

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