Assets in ETPs globally reach record high Q1
Record levels of assets for exchange-traded products were reached at the end of the first quarter of this year as investors piled into the products, Deborah Fuhr has said.
“With the ECB beginning quantitative easing, investors have allocated the majority of net new assets to European equities. Developed markets were up 4 per cent and emerging markets up 2 per cent, while the US had a turbulent first quarter with the S&P500 ending up 1 per cent,” the managing partner at ETFGI said.
According to the London-based research and consultancy firm, the total value of assets in ETPs globally was $2.92 trillion (£1.98trn). Regionally, in the US, assets reached $2.09trn (£1.4trn), Asia Pacific at $119.6bn (£81.1bn) and Japan at $109.3bn (£71.1bn).
The exchange traded funds/ETP industry had 5,669 products globally, with 10,961 listings from 247 providers on 63 exchanges in 51 countries, according to ETFGI’s findings.
BlackRock-owned iShares gathered the largest net ETF/ETP inflows year-to-date with $38.9bn (£26.3bn), followed by Vanguard with $23.38bn (£15.8bn), WisdomTree with $13.23bn (£9bn) and DB/x-trackers with $11.45bn (£7.8bn).
Adviser View
Sebastian van Mook, financial adviser at Shropshire-based Abacus Associates, said: “There are opportunities all over, but investing depends on a client’s risk profile. I’ve not had big demand for ETFs.
“There is good movement in North America but one needs to drill down deeper, and one must to pick right in Europe. As we are in a bull market in the UK, I would avoid ETFs from some developing countries such as Brazil. But it is all faddish: a careful look at total flows of new money invested will probably reveal that the so-called inflow is just old money moving around and the market is quite suppressed.”
