State Street Global Investors’ SPDR SSGA Gender Diversity Index ETF (NYSE: SHE) has grown to more than $280m in assets since its launch on International Women’s Day on 8 March 2016, making it one of the most successful ETF launches of year so far. The fund invests in US companies with the most favourable ratios of women to men in executive roles and board positions. David Mazza, head of ETF and mutual fund research at SSGA, said: “Although this may be a small sample size, performance has illustrated that having a bias toward firms with more diverse leadership has led to higher returns with less drawdown in 2016.”

The European Central Bank is being forced to re-evaluate how it can continue buying €80bn worth of bonds per month when there are less and less on the market with any yield. Germany’s 10-year bund yield has fallen to below zero for the first time in history, prompting Citibank analysts to say that the entire German sovereign market could be off limits for the ECB by November, as it must buy bonds that yield over 0.4%. If the ECB tapers back its bund purchases, this would most likely benefit ETFs tracking the government bonds of France, Spain and Italy as the ECB would buy their bonds instead.

Exchange-traded funds tracking Brazilian equities have soared in 2016 with the market on track to be the best performing asset category in 2016, despite ongoing political uncertainty in the country which has recently culminated in the impeachment of the country’s president Dilma Rousseff. The MSCI Brazil is up 32.7% year-to-date (1 September 2016) in local currency terms, contributing to significant gains for ETFs from iShares, Amundi, HSBC and db X-trackers which track the index.

Index providers MSCI and S&P Dow Jones Indices have created a new sector for real estate within the Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS) framework, elevating its position from an Industry Group within the Financials sector. The creation of this new sector will affect investors in Financials sector ETFs linked to MSCI and S&P DJI indices globally, with changes scheduled for 16 September. Different approaches are being taken by ETF issuers in how they deal with the reclassification.

“Passive investing is worse than Marxism.” That’s according to analysts at research and brokerage firm Sanford C. Bernstein & Co in a recent paper that has sparked one of the hottest debates in the ongoing active-versus-passive conversation. Bernstein said that passive funds, such as ETFs, threaten the very structure of capitalism, arguing that “a supposedly capitalist economy where the only investment is passive is worse than either a centrally planned economy or an economy with active market led capital management.”

State Street Global Advisors’ SPDR S&P 500 ETF (NYSE Arca: SPY), the first exchange-traded fund to launch in the US in January 1993, has hit more than $200bn in assets, making it by far the largest ETF in the world. “Since its inception in 1993, SPY has offered all investors tax efficient, cost effective and liquid exposure to US large cap stocks,” said David Mazza, head of ETF and Mutual Fund Research at SSGA. “Crossing $200bn in assets under management on August 12, 2016 is testament to SPY’s prominence in the market and broad use by investors.”

The world of Nintendo gaming and Pokèmon Go has taken smartphone users by storm this summer, propelling the world’s only video gaming-focused ETF into the spotlight. The newest craze, Pokèmon Go, an augmented reality game where users wander the streets to “catch” virtual characters and throw around Pokèballs, fuelled shares in Tokyo-listed Nintendo to more than double in mid July. The smartphone game has achieved some incredible feats, including encouraging teenagers to leave the house, but it has also had a positive impact on ETFs with exposure to it.

Boston-based fund manager Fidelity Investments has applied to the SEC TO launch a new kind of non-transparent active exchange-traded fund, arguing that the hybrid model will combine the best features of a traditional ETF and a closed-end fund. The proposed ETF will publish a daily “tracking basket” in order to calculate the intraday net asset value, allowing participants to trade the fund throughout the day, and will further offer shareholders the option of selling their shares at NAV every week if they want to avoid selling them on the stock exchange.

Global flows into emerging market ETFs have surged as investors tire of the European and Japanese central bank trade and the capital market “sweet spot” of the post-Brexit world continues. According to Bloomberg data, US-listed emerging market ETFs have taken in about $17bn and Europe-based emerging market ETFs have gathered $12bn this year to 3 August. The money was spread across 54 different European-based ETFs, in addition to 46 US-based funds. “This trend is deep and wide, it’s not just a few institutions getting excited,” Eric Balchunas, senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg, told ETF Strategy.

Assets in smart beta exchange-traded funds hit an all-time high of $429bn at the end of July, according to data from ETF Consultancy ETFGI, and it is being supported by new products launched into the European market on an almost a weekly basis. Driving the uptake in smart beta ETFs are investors looking for risk-reducing strategies, according to new research from Morningstar. These ETFs attracted €2.16bn of net inflows between April and June, making up over one quarter – 27% – of the total inflows for the European ETF market. Morningstar’s research names four of the most “interesting” smart beta product launches this year.