Flows into ETFs and ETPs listed globally rebounded in February gathering net inflows of US $29.0 billion which, when combined with the positive market performance in the month, pushed assets in the global ETF/ETP industry to a new record high of US $2.44 trillion, according to preliminary findings from ETFGI’s February Global ETF and ETP industry insights report.
The Global ETF/ETP industry has 5,183 ETFs/ETPs, with 10,210 listings, from 219 providers on 59 exchanges.
“Positive comments from the Fed indicating that the US economy continues to brighten, the S&P 500 ending February with a record close of 1859 and signs of a wider global recovery in equities seems to have caused investors to come out of their winter hibernation after the winter storms and put net inflows of US $29.0 billion into ETFs/ETPs in February,” according to Deborah Fuhr, Managing Partner at ETFGI.
Dissecting the overall net inflows we find that fixed income ETFs/ETPs gathered US $16.8 billion – the largest net inflows – followed by equity ETFs/ETPs with US $10.2 billion. Commodity ETFs/ETPs saw net inflows of US $870 million.
The competition to gather assets remains high. The top 100 ETFs/ETPs – less than 2% of the 5,183 ETFs/ETPs – account for more than half (57%) of global assets. Only 7% of ETFs/ETPs hold more than US $1 billion in assets, while 69% have less than US $100 million in assets, 59% have less than US $50 million in assets and nearly a third of all products have less than US $10 million in assets.
In the first two months of 2014 Vanguard has gathered the largest net ETF/ETP inflows with US $9.4 billion, followed by iShares with US $7.1 billion, Nomura AM with US $4.2 billion, First Trust with US $2.5 billion and Guggenheim with US $2.0 billion in net inflows.
This article was written by Deborah Fuhr, partner and co-founder of ETFGI.