With investors piling into stocks despite fears of the coronavirus contagion continuing to spread, ETF inflows continued into uncharted territory last month.
ETFGI, a leading independent research and consultancy firm covering trends in the global ETFs and ETPs ecosystem, reported today that ETFs and ETPs listed globally garnered net inflows of US$67.15 billion at the end of last month, which is a marked improvement from the US$17.23 billion gathered at this point last year.
Assets invested in the global ETFs/ETPs industry increased by 0.4%, from US$6.35 trillion at the end of December 2019, to US$6.37 trillion at the end of January, according to ETFGI’s January 2020 Global ETFs and ETPs industry landscape insights report, an annual paid-for research subscription service.
“During January the S&P 500 lost 0.04% as markets were affected by the Coronavirus (nCoV) outbreak and offset any optimism on the trade talks with China. Global equities as measured by the S&P Global BMI were also down 1.33% and the S&P Emerging BMI declined 4.3% as well.” According to Deborah Fuhr, managing partner, founder and owner of ETFGI.
In addition to local markets, during January 2020, ETFs/ETPs listed globally attracted net inflows of $67.15 Bn. Meanwhile, equity ETFs/ETPs listed globally garnered net inflows of $34.39 Bn during January, which is substantially higher than the $8.94 Bn in net outflows equity products attracted a year ago.
Fixed income ETFs/ETPs were also quite active, with globally listed ETFs/ETPs attracting net inflows of $21.13 Bn during January, a figure just slightly lower than the $23.67 Bn in fixed income net inflows from January 2019. In addition, Commodity ETFs/ETPs reported $4.14 Bn in net inflows during January, which is significantly more than the $2.77 Bn in net inflows gathered through the prior year at the same time.
Several heavy hitters can be credited with the substantial inflows. These top 20 ETFs by net new assets, which collectively gathered $32.85 Bn at the end of January, include funds such as the iShares Core MSCI EAFE ETF (IEFA US), which gathered $2.59 Bn alone, the Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI), which attracted nearly $2.51Bn in assets, the Vanguard Total Bond Market ETF (BND), a favorite among fixed income ETF junkies, and the iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (IVV).
With gold making a strong showing in January, up nearly 4%, commodity-based funds were also very popular, with the iShares Physical Gold ETC (SGLN) and the SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) leading the charge.
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