BlackRock has reduced the fees charged on three socially responsible ETFs and eight fixed income ETFs listed in the US. The 11 funds have total assets under management of approximately $4 billion.

Horizons ETFs Management has announced that the Horizons US Managed Risk ETF (NYSE Arca: USMR) will close effective at the close of business on 8 September 2017.

First Trust Portfolios Canada has announced that its board of directors has approved a proposal to merge the First Trust AlphaDEX Canadian Dividend ETF (TSX: FDY) into the First Trust Canadian Capital Strength ETF (TSX: FST). A special meeting of unitholders of FDY will be held on 20 September 2017 to consider and vote upon the proposal.

Since 1 March 2017, E*TRADE has added 21 ETFs from seven providers, including ACSI Funds, ArrowShares, ETF Securities, Janus Henderson, JP Morgan, Legg Mason, and OppenheimerFunds, to its commission-free ETF program.

Eleven new ETFs were listed on London Stock Exchange in July 2017, bringing the total number of ETFs or ETPs listed on the exchange to 921 and 457 respectively. ETF providers listing on the London market during July included Lyxor, BMO, ETF Securities and BlackRock.

Tradeweb has reported that equity ETFs saw net buying activity on its European-listed ETF marketplace during July with ‘buys’ outperforming ‘sells’ by eight percentage points. This was the first month of net positive buying of equity ETFs since March with European equity ETFs proving to be the most actively-traded ETF category at more than €2.8bn in notional volume.

By Viktor Nossek, director of research at WisdomTree in Europe.

Macron’s labour market reforms appear difficult to enact in the face of historic stiff opposition from labour unions. But unlike his predecessor Francois Hollande, who ran on a socialist agenda, Macron is different in that as an “independent” he can be more confrontational with labour unions and force them to negotiate.

MSCI has released its index performance report for July 2017, breaking down the best and worst performing equity indices over this period by country, factor and sector. The index provider, which is one of the leading providers of equity indices to the exchange-traded fund industry, reports the highest index returns in July were achieved by China (8.9%) for country exposure in a month where the lowest return was still positive, at 0.9% for Switzerland.

Global ETP flows totalled $39.6 billion in July, bringing year-to-date (YTD) flows to $371.5bn, just shy of the $378.7bn recorded for all of last year, according to BlackRock’s latest ETP Landscape report. Equity ETPs led net inflows for the month with $25.8bn, reaching a new full-year high with $257.8bn YTD.

By Nizam Hamid , ETF strategist at WisdomTree in Europe.

Fixed income has been at the heart of European investor portfolios for many years with average allocations in 2016 standing at 51%. Even in an environment of low or negative yielding domestic government bonds, overall allocations have remained high. Now eurozone government bond investors are overwhelmingly focused on the risks relating to the end of quantitative easing and the potential for a rise in interest rates at some point in 2018.