ULTUMUS July ETF Flows Commentary
Global and US: US small caps get big inflow
The largest four global ETF issuers – Blackrock’s iShares, State Street Global Advisors, Vanguard, and Invesco, also gathered the largest inflows, in the same order, with iShares gathering $34.13 billion, SPDR $30.21 billion, Vanguard $14.81 billion, and Invesco $9.22 billion.
The US market saw almost the same pattern, though State Street’s $28.74 billion of flows were slightly ahead of iShares’ $27.04 billion, while Vanguard and Invesco were in third and fourth places at $11.41 billion and $9.51 billion.
Looking at individual US ETFs, as usual S&P 500 trackers got the largest inflows but somewhat unusually iShares’ Russell 2000 tracker, IWM, won the third biggest inflow at $7.27 billion.
Europe: fixed income leads inflows
In Europe, the largest provider, iShares also gathered the biggest inflows but the third largest, Amundi, and fourth largest, Vanguard, both saw more inflows than the second largest, Xtrackers.
The picture for individual ETFs in Europe was very different from the US however in that fixed income ETFs were in the lead, and a commodity ETF was in the top three. Ishares’ short term US Treasury bond ETF, IB01, got the biggest inflow at $0.96 billion, and Xtrackers’ Euro overnight swap UCITS ETF, DBXT was second with $0.85 billion of flows while Invesco Physical Gold was in third place with $0.68 billion of inflows.
Asia: smaller players gather more inflows
In Asia, some of the smaller players continue to punch above their weight. Fu Hwa Securities got the largest inflows at $1.834 billion even though it makes up only 2.48% of top 20 ETF issuer assets in Asia. This came mainly from Fuh Hwa Taiwan Technology Dividend Highlight ETF, which gained $1.803 billion of inflows, more than any other Asian ETF in July.
Its total assets of $12.1 billion mean it is not even in the top ten of our top twenty ranking, where Next Funds runs $243 billion and Nikko $109 billion. And the second largest inflows of $1.659 billion came from the fifth largest issuer, Mirae, which runs only 5.94% of top 20 ETF assets in Asia. Moreover, the third largest inflows of $1.247 billion came from Cathay, which makes up only 4.13% of the top 20 assets.
We have added crypto and commodity rankings - and they have both similarities and differences with the equity and fixed income scorecards.
Crypto: Grayscale loses assets to cheaper products
In US crypto, the second largest provider, iShares, led inflows, followed by the third largest provider, Fidelity, and both are also global and US top 20 players. The largest crypto ETF for now is Grayscale but given its very high fees we predict it will not take long for iShares to overtake Grayscale, which saw a net outflow of $1.35 billion in July, as it converted a closed end fund into the Ethereum Trust ETF charging fees of 2.5% that are at least 10 times higher than other ETH ETFs. In the early days of crypto, Grayscale was an innovator widening investor access but now there is no shortage of exchange listed competition.
The top 20 crypto ranking also includes some more specialist and niche managers – Bitwise, Valkrie, Virtune – that do not feature in the top 20 for other categories
Europe’s crypto ranking is different, with 21Shares and CoinShares/XBT making up over two thirds of the market.
Commodities
In commodities, the top two providers are the same as for global ETFs: State Street and iShares. They saw the largest inflows while the third and fourth largest inflows came from Proshares and Janus Henderson Tabula (SMO), smaller providers. Though Proshares is in the top 20 for the US neither of the two are in the top 20 globally.
Meanwhile the third largest commodity ETF provider, Invesco, saw some outflows.
