ETFs are still the fly to the mutual fund elephant, but they’re coming on strong. Assets invested in exchange-traded funds and exchange-traded products broke through and important global barrier to $3 trillion in invested assets at the end of May
The actual amount, $3.015 trillion in assets under management (AUM), came from 5,757 ETFs/ETPs, with 11,117 listings, from 256 providers listed on 62 exchanges in 51 countries, according to ETFGI.com.
“Our forecast was that assets would break through $3 trillion by the middle of 2015,” according to Deborah Fuhr, managing partner of ETFGI. “It took the global ETF/ETP industry 19 years to reach $1 trillion in assets under management, 23 years to reach $2 trillion in AUM and just 25 years to reach US$3 trillion in AUM. The increasing rate of asset growth illustrates how ETFs have been embraced as an investment solution by institutional investors, financial advisors and retail investors around the world.”
Record levels of assets were also reached at the end of May for ETFs/ETPs listed in the United States at US$2.15 trillion and Japan at US$117 billion.
“In May the both the S&P 500 and the Dow were up 1% while, developed markets were down 1%, and emerging markets declined 3%,” Fuhr added.
In May 2015, ETFs/ETPs listed globally saw net inflows of $19.1 billion. Equity ETFs/ETPs gathered net inflows of $20.8 billion, while fixed income ETFs/ETPs experienced net outflows of $1.5 billion and Commodity ETFs/ETPs had net outflows of $912 million.
Through the end of May record levels of net new assets have been reached by ETFs/ETPs listed globally gathering $127.6 billion which is a significant increase over the prior record of $109.4 billion gathered in in the first five months of 2013.
YTD products listed in Europe gathered $39.2 billion which is significantly more than the prior record of $26.4 billion gathered over the same period in 2014.
ETFs/ETPs listed in Japan gathered $14.5 billion, which is slightly higher than the $14.3 billion gathered during the same period in 2014, and ETFs/ETPs listed in Canada gathered $5.6 billion which is slightly higher than the prior record of $5.5 billion gathered in the first five months of 2012.
Vanguard gathered the largest net ETF/ETP inflows in May with $5.2 billion, followed by Huatai-PB with $3.4 billion, WisdomTree with $1.7 billiob net inflows and First Trust with $1.6 billion.
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With more than 20 years serving financial markets, John Sullivan is the former editor-in-chief of Investment Advisor magazine and retirement editor of ThinkAdvisor.com. Sullivan is also the former editor of Boomer Market Advisor and Bank Advisor magazines, and has a background in the insurance and investment industries in addition to his journalism roots.
