PRIV Begs the Question: Is Private Debt Right for ETFs?

Retail investors finally getting access to the opaque world of private debt—through a State Street ETF launched in February—so far don’t seem be falling in love.

The SPDR SSGA Apollo IG Public & Private Credit ETF (PRIV) has been met with skeptical comments from investors as well as concerns from the Securities and Exchange Commission about the fund’s name and liquidity. The issuers are teeing up a second similar fund, the SPDR SSGA Short Duration IG Public & Private Credit ETF.

The much-anticipated PRIV has pulled in $23.8 million since it’s February 27 launch, which includes a drought from early March to late June when no inflows were recorded, according to FactSet data on etf.com. The fund, a joint launch from No. 3 ETF issuer State Street Corp. (STT) and Apollo Global Management Inc. (APO), has fallen from its opening price of $25.12 and is currently trading at around $24.95.

The fund has stumbled amid a fundraising downturn in private equity and a possible bankruptcy of Linqto, which offered stakes in private companies and whose practices are now being probed the SEC and Justice Department. Private equity fundraising plummeted 35% in the first quarter compared with the year-earlier period, and 2025 fundraising is on track to come in below levels from 2024, itself a weak year, Bloomberg reported in May.

PRIV Price (Top Pane) and Volume (Bottom Pane)—Source: FactSet

Questions about the wisdom of creating an exchange-traded fund that holds mostly illiquid private credit may be damping enthusiasm for PRIV, despite the fund’s investments so far skewing heavily toward the “public” side noted in its title. PRIV’s top four holdings are debt issued by Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp., or Freddie Mac, while a State Street money market fund rounds out the top five.

State Street said that PRIV does appear to be catching on with investors and demand is increasing. June trading volume is its highest month since inception, the company said.

“Compared to newly launched active fixed-income ETFs over the past five years, PRIV has seen a higher level of total volume traded and number of trades,” a company spokesman said in an email.

Much of PRIV’s assets are hard-to-value and difficult-to-trade credit instruments, and liquidity isn’t among the fund’s attributes, according to the Accredited Investor Insights blog from Leyla Kunimoto.

“The ETF structure, by definition, is liquid. When you try to marry the two, you get a product that’s neither fish nor fowl—and, I’m sorry to report, the risks don’t disappear,” she wrote in a July 6 Substack post titled Private Credit in a Public Wrapper: Inside the $PRIV ETF.