By Eric Dutram, Assistant Vice President, DWS.
One of the greatest debates in investing is which strategy is better for outperformance: active or passive? While this is a long-standing battle between these two sides, the arguments tend to boil down to just a couple key factors.
Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), owner of the NYSE Arca, is planning to launch an open-architecture platform to standardize primary market ETF trading. It has signed up BlackRock as a development partner. The new platform will seek to simplify the primary market and is expected to bring more efficiency and transparency to the creation and redemption process.
HANetf has unveiled the Authorised Participants (APs) committed to provide liquidity to its white-label ETF platform. The firm, which launched in August last year, is expected to announce its first ETFs within weeks.
The iShares Core S&P 500 UCITS ETF has become the first exchange-traded fund domiciled and listed in Europe to surpass $30 billion in assets. Strong inflows and healthy market performance powered the BlackRock ETF past the milestone on 31 July 2018. Stephen Cohen, Head of iShares EMEA at BlackRock, said: “This milestone shows that investors are increasingly using ETFs at the heart of their portfolios.”
Exchange-traded funds providing exposure to Turkish equities are the worst performing ETFs on European exchanges this year on the back of a tumultuous domestic political landscape, dwindling investor confidence, and a 23.5% depreciation in the lira versus the dollar. The iShares MSCI Turkey UCITS ETF, Europe’s largest pure-play Turkish equity ETF, is down 35% YTD.
New York-based Defiance ETFs has launched its debut fund, the Defiance Future Tech ETF (AUGR US), on NYSE Arca. The equity fund is designed to capture opportunities within the realm of augmented reality and virtual reality technology.
By Aneeka Gupta, Associate Director of Research, WisdomTree.
The slowdown of global ETP flows in June 2018 (50% behind last year’s pace or $30.0 billion) resonated concerns over uncertainty tied to trade wars and ensuing protectionist policies.
First Asset Investment Management has launched the First Asset Enhanced Government Bond ETF (FGO CN) on Toronto Stock Exchange. Co-managed by Marret Asset Management, the ETF aims to provide both interest income and capital appreciation by investing primarily in government debt issued globally.
The Bank of Japan has announced changes to its ETF buying programme following concerns that the purchases were having an outsized effect on some stock prices. Whilst the central bank remains committed to buying ¥5.7 trillion ($51 billion) worth of domestically listed Japanese equity ETFs annually, it has re-weighted the allocations to each tranche of ETF purchases and introduced a degree of flexibility.
HSBC Global Asset Management has launched the HSBC MSCI China A Inclusion UCITS ETF on London Stock Exchange. The fund provides investors with a tool to invest in the progressive partial inclusion of China A shares in the MSCI EM Index.