Investors continue to pile into exchange traded fund investments on the U.S. exchanges as an efficient way to gain access to various segments of the market. Overseas, the story is pretty much the same, with ETF products experiencing robust asset growth.
For instance, the Italian ETF market, which recently marked its 10th anniversary, saw assets grow 50% year-over-year in the last decade, accumulating €17.8 billion, or $$23 billion, as of the end of August, reports Chris Flood for Financial Times.
There are 798 ETF products, offered by 11 providers, listed on Italy’s exchange.
In comparison, there were 1,474 U.S.-listed ETFs with $1.23 trillion in assets as of the end of August. Globally, exchange traded products, which includes ETFs and exchange traded notes, hit a record $1.76 trillion in assets over August. [ETF Assets Hit Record]
“The 10th anniversary of ETF trading in Italy is an important date for the Borsa Italiana to mark and we anticipate further strong growth in interest in ETFs from both institutional and retail investors in future,” Pietro Poletto, head of ETF and fixed income markets at the London Stock Exchange, owner of the Borsa Italiana, said in the Financial Times article.
Interest in Italy-listed ETFs has increased, even in face of the equity turnover on the Borsa Italiana since the beginning of the 2007 financial crisis.
Emanuele Bellingeri, Head of iShares Italy at BlackRock, notes that 70% of ETF trades in Italy are done on over-the-counter basis. Institutional investors account for 80% of iShare’s Italy-listed ETF assets.
Deborah Fuhr, managing partner at ETFGI, pointed out that Italian investors were more apt to take on international exposure – none of the top 10 Italy-listed ETFs were linked to domestic equities. Furh also added that retail investors were more engaged with ETFs than other parts of Europe.
“We can see that retail investors are more prominent in the Italian ETF market as average ETF trade sizes on the Borsa Italiana are smaller than on the other main European ETF exchanges such as Deutsche Börse, the London Stock Exchange or NYSE Euronext,” Fuhr added in the FT story.
For more information on the ETF industry, visit our current affairs category.
Max Chen contributed to this article.