Deborah Fuhr, ETFGI discusses global ETF flows in June and H1 2020

Deborah Fuhr Welcome to ETF TV, I’m Deborah Fuhr from ETF TV and ETFGI. Today we will be looking at the trends in the global ETF industry as of the end of June based on ETFGI’s new research report.

When we look at the ETF industry at the end of June, the assets have increased back to 6.27 billion dollars. This is short of the record that was set at the end of January when we reached 6.37 trillion. When we think about the net inflows, so that’s creations vs redemptions, this has been another strong month. We’ve taken in 63 billion of net new asset, the majority is 39 billion going into fixed income ETFs, 16 billion going into equities, and commodities took in five and, and active ETFs have taken in seven. On a year to date basis, the interesting trend is that equity ETFs have taken in 88 billion, which is up by 10 billion over, where we were last year at this point at 78 billion. We’ve seen that fixed income ETFs are at 105 billion on the year to date basis. That is down slightly from 113 at this point last year. Commodities is a big winner; we’re at 54 billion dollars of net inflows, while last year at this point was just three billion, and active ETFs are at 26 billion, which is up by 10 billion from last year at this point, which was 16.

On a global basis, year to date, we’ve seen 293 billion of net inflows, which is significantly more than the 209 billion at this point last year. Diving into these numbers, corporate bonds have received significant inflows, partially driven by the Fed buying fixed income ETFs. We’ve also seen that gold has been a big winner. So I talked about commodities. Gold alone has taken in 37 billion of net new assets, whereas last year at this point it was just six billion. And when we look at the issuers of ETFs, there’s some interesting trends. So year to date, this is the first time that Vanguard has taken in more net new assets than iShares, or anyone else for that matter. So when you look, they’ve taken in 90 billion of net new money, while iShares have taken in 60. State Street, the third largest provider has taken in 19, which at this point last year they were at minus two. And Invesco has taken in five billion. Although not in the top three or four, Nomura has actually ranked third in terms of year to date inflows, taking in 23 billion of net new. This is really driven by the fact that the Bank of Japan has been buying equity ETFs as quantitative easing tools since 2012.

I’d like to thank you for watching this episode of ETF TV. For more episodes, please go to ETFTV.NET. Thank you.

Published on July 15, 2020