The popularisation of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and related exchange-traded products (ETPs) continues as global assets under management achieve record levels of growth, expanding 21% faster than previous years, according to data from ETF consultancy ETFGI.
Deborah Fuhr, managing partner at ETFGI.
Global net inflows amounted to $199bn in the first seven months of the year, well above the $164bn gathered for the same period last year.
Total assets now exceed $3tn across 5,891 ETFs/ETPs, with 11,396 listings, from 265 providers on 63 exchanges in 51 countries.
The US remains the largest market for ETFs and continues to grow at a rapid pace, expanding by $125bn so far in 2015 , exceeding the previous record of $116bn set in the first seven months of 2013.
Both European and Japanese ETF markets have also posted record levels of growth in new assets, amassing $48bn and $24bn respectively since January 1st.
Equity-based ETFs have seen the strongest demand this year, growing net new assets by $137bn year-to-date (YTD). Fixed income ETFs gathered $44bn, followed by commodity-based ETFs with $2bn net new assets.
In July, equity and fixed income ETFs gathered $35bn and $9bn in new assets respectively, while commodity-based funds saw net redemptions of $2bn, highlighting investor’s discontent with the ongoing bear market across all commodities.
“The S&P 500 index ended up 2% for the month of July and finished the first seven months of 2015 up 3%. Although investors faced uncertainty in China and Greece during July they continued to invest significant net new assets in equity ETFs”, said Deborah Fuhr, managing partner of ETFGI.
iShares, the world’s largest provider of ETFs and a division of investment giant BlackRock, was the largest beneficiary of net new assets, expanding their AUM by $11.3bn in July and $63.4bn YTD.
SSGA, the investment manager behind the SPDR brand of ETFs, and Vanguard received $6bn and $5.3bn in net inflows in July, respectively, while Nomura AM and Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management‘s db x-trackers platform posted net new assets of $2.9bn and $2.6bn respectively.
Vanguard recorded net inflows of $50.1bn YTD, followed by db x-trackers with $21.7bn, WisdomTree with $21.5bn, and Nomura AM with $10.4bn.