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Exchange-Traded Funds, Products Reach Record For Assets In May - Data
Tom Burroughes
10 June 2016
Assets invested in exchange-traded funds and products listed globally reached a record high of $3.143 trillion at the end of May, according to preliminary data from ETFGI, a firm tracking developments in these investment vehicles. Record levels of assets invested in ETFs/ETPs listed in the US were also reached at the end of May, at $2.229 trillion, and in Japan, at $147 billion. ETFs are typically open-ended, index-based funds. They can be bought and sold like ordinary shares on a stock exchange and offer broad exposure across developed, emerging and frontier markets, equities, fixed income and commodities. Exchange-traded products are similar to ETFs in how they trade and settle but do not use an open-end fund structure. In May, ETFs/ETPs gathered net inflows of $10.60 billion. Fixed income ETFs/ETPs gathered the largest net inflows with $7.47 billion, followed by commodity ETFs/ETPs with $5.47 billion. Equity ETFs/ETPs experienced net outflows of $4.53 billion.
At the end of May 2016, the global ETF/ETP industry had 6,374 ETFs/ETPs, with 12,200 listings, from 280 providers listed on 65 exchanges in 53 countries, the report said.