At the end of October, there were 1,827 global exchange traded products with more than $1.8 trillion in total assets, according to the report.
Year-to-date global ETP flows of $192.3 billion have already surpassed 2011’s full year total of $173.4 billion. ETP flows for the January-October period were the strongest since 2008. Bond funds have attracted about one-third of all inflows so far this year.
October inflows of $9.5 billion “is not a bad number, but in the context of what happened in September, which was truly an extraordinary month for the industry, it is lower,” Dodd Kittsley, global head of ETP research at BlackRock, said in a Dow Jones report. “What was behind that [strong flows in September]was very much a risk-on trade globally that was fuelled by coordinated actions by central banks in terms of creating more accommodative monetary policy.”
He added: “Investors are beginning to say, ‘is this accommodative monetary policy going to stimulate growth or not?’”
Worries over the U.S. fiscal cliff and presidential election as well as slow growth in Europe also contributed to decelerating ETF flows, Kittsley said in the report. [What the ETF Flows Show]
Full disclosure: Tom Lydon’s clients own SPY.