ESG Observatory from TrackInsight recognises huge growth in demand for ESG ETFs

Value investing is under the spotlight already this year, having spent some five to 10 years in the doldrums, outshone by its glamorous growth cousin. Brandon Rakszawski (pictured), Senior ETF Product Manager at VanEck, has noted that November 2020 saw the Morningstar Wide Moat Focus Index come back strongly relative to the S&P 500 Index to erase a good portion of its 2020 relative underperformance. 

Research conducted by Cerulli Associates finds that thematic ETFs enjoyed a boom over 2020 and their popularity is set to continue over 2021. Net flows into sector-themed equity products during the first 10 months of 2020 amounted to EUR89 billion (USD108 billion), more than triple the net sales for 2019. Assets under management amounted to EUR512.4 billion at the close of October 2020, the firm says.

Morningstar reports in its European ETF Asset Flows Update for the fourth quarter of 2020 that European ETFs closed 2020 breaking through the EUR1 trillion barrier in assets. 

News came in early January that SIX, the Swiss Stock Exchange, had registered the listing of HANetf’s BTCE ETP by ETC Group, further strengthening its position at the forefront of the provision of crypto ETPs.

Value investing gets another outing and a different look with Distillate Capital’s Value Investing 2.0 approach.

JPMorgan Asset Management, its Shanghai-based joint venture, China International Fund Management, and investment platform Snowball Finance, have published a survey of the current ETF landscape in China.

Data from TrackInsight shows the global ETF market finished 2020 at a record high of USD7.6 trillion, across 6,518 ETFs. A combination of strong equity market performance coupled with accelerating investor inflows contributed to the new record, the firm says.

New ETF index provider, Blue Horizon Capital, working with Exchange Traded Concepts, is launching the Blue Horizon BNE ETF, focusing on the new energy economy. 

Since launching active ETFs in the summer, Agility Shares has raised close to USD51 million. The ETFs are managed by USD2.1 billion Toews Asset Management and Dan Kullman (pictured), Director of Education and Training at the firm explains that the majority of the asset raise has been in THY, the firm’s Agility Shares Dynamic Tactical Income ETF, while the smaller asset base has gone into MRSK, the Agility Shares Managed Risk ETF, designed to attempt to lower drawdowns and lessen risk without capping any potential gains.

2020 has been the year in which the UK’s Church of England went into the index business, with the January launch on the London Stock Exchange of the FTSE-TPI Climate Transition Index.