“Rather than the much-discussed ‘great rotation’ from bonds into equities, the first quarter showed investors moving cash from the sidelines into equities, and preparing for a rise in interest rates by rotating within fixed income into short-term and floating-rate ETFs,” Russ Koesterich, BlackRock Global Chief Investment Strategist, said in the note.
Commodities, though, saw significant outflows of $9.2 billion, particularly out of gold related assets.
Globally, there were 4,806 ETPs at the end of the first quarter, with a record $2.08 billion in assets under management.
Meanwhile, bringing in $56.1 billion year-to-date, developed equity mutual fund flows still lag behind developed equity ETPs, compared to the $60.5 billion for ETPs. Emerging market equity flows for mutual funds, though, rose to $25.0 billion and fixed-income mutual funds brought in $79 billion, outpacing ETPs.
For more information on ETF fund flows, visit our ETF performance reports category.
Max Chen contributed to this article.