Dan Barnes Welcome to ETF TV News, I’m Dan Barnes, and joining me is Deborah Fuhr, discussing the new issues in the ETF space over the last week. Deborah, welcome to the show.
Deborah Fuhr Thank you.
Dan Barnes So tell us what have been the most interesting issues over the past seven days?
Deborah Fuhr So there’s been 19 new launches. The largest one is the China Merchants ChinaBond 0-3Y Yangtze River Delta Local Government Bond ETF, which came to market with 88 million in assets. I think that’s part of a broader theme where we’re seeing real interest in access to Chinese bonds. Many of the index providers are going to be including them in their indices and we have seen that the yields are better than many of the other yields on government bonds. And we’ve also seen that the ability for foreigners to invest has been historically pretty small, so these ETFs do make it easier for both mainland Chinese investors as well as foreign investors who have quotas to be able to buy exposure. So there was one recently in Singapore which was the largest fixed income launch out in Asia, so this is definitely a trend that I think we will see continuing.
Dan Barnes Any other big issues over the last week?
Deborah Fuhr We’re seeing thematic or tech ETFs coming to market, and we’re also seeing Chinese ETFs focus coming to market. So those would be kind of playing on themes that we’ve seen for a while, where many investors are looking at what areas of the economy are going to improve and continue to perform well, based on the COVID-19 situation continuing, and work from home continuing. There was a new SPDR Bloomberg ESG product listed on the Deutsche Boerse, and we’ve also seen hydrogen economy ETF, we’ve seen FANG ETFs, tech ETFs. So I think those would be the ones that I would pull out this week in terms of things that have been happening in the market.
Dan Barnes Are there any specific products that we might be looking out for within those?
Deborah Fuhr CIB CSI 300 ETF came to market, again in Shanghai. We saw the SPDR, which I mentioned, the corporate bond ESG. From Amundi, we’ve seen iShares come to market. So there’s been a number of different products that have come out. And a global X cleantech would be another example of kind of that tech-focused thematic.
Dan Barnes Is it worth investors keeping an eye on the primary market for ETFs at the moment, because it sounds like issuance is still quite bubbly.
Deborah Fuhr Yeah, I would say that we definitely saw that most of the issuers kind of went into the rabbit hole around the March-April time frame, and they have come out and many are trying to create products that are playing on the areas of interest for investors, which is clearly looking at more granularity in fixed income, looking at thematics, and also clearly an interest in ESG exposure.
Dan Barnes Deborah, that’s been great. Thanks so much.
Deborah Fuhr Thank you.