In the firm’s Global ETF and ETP industry insights report for last month, they found that these financial instruments had total global net inflows of $107 billion through the month of May. This helped to push this listed group to a new all-time high of $2.14 trillion of assets invested globally.
More specifically, equity ETFs and ETPs gained the most, with $25 billion injected into these funds, dwarfing their closest rival, fixed income, which saw $3 billion of inflows.
By region, North American equity funds and products performed particularly well, gaining $16 billion of investor interest, followed closely by developed Asia Pacific equity vehicles gaining $9 billion. Meanwhile, commodities were the worst performing asset class, experiencing net outflows of $6.7 billion.
The London-based research firm also found there was now a total of 4,849 of these investment vehicles, with 211 providers listed on 56 exchanges. In terms of specific funds, the most subscribed for the month were Vanguard. followed by Daiwa, SPDR ETFs and then Wisdom Tree.
“Net inflows into ETFs providing exposure to Japan during May elevated Daiwa and Wisdom Tree into the top four firms out of 211 ranked by net inflows,” Deborah Fuhr, managing partner at ETFGI said.
Despite this, these funds still remain considerably behind the market leader, iShares, which has assets of $824 billion accounting for around 38 per cent of the market.
ETFs are index-based funds that are traded on exchanges and offer investors a broad exposure to specific asset classes or regions. ETPs are similar index vehicles, but do not have the same open-end fund structure.
