Tilney’s head of multi-asset, Ben Seager-Scott, is the subject of this week’s Buyside Interview, telling us that, in the week that brought us news that ETF assets have gone over USD6 trillion, he has few concerns for liquidity in the sector. An early adopter of ETFs, Seager-Scott is cautious on thematic ETFs, believing that more work needs to be done to make them a more compelling investment option. Fixed income ETFs he likes, finding them useful across the board for private client portfolios.

The middle of November saw the US’s SEC announce its intention to approve a number of new structures which will allow active funds to cover their portfolios with a new type of ETF wrapper. We bring you an interview with Blue Tractor Group, whose Shielded Alpha wrapper allows a high degree of transparency on the underlying ETF but not enough to give away all its secrets.

This week’s newsletter brings you an interview with Bruce Bond, founder and CEO of Innovator Capital, which has seen USD1.6 billion come through its doors since launch in August 2018. The money is coming into the firm’s structured product within an ETF format, which gives investors a capped return on the upside but a level of protection on the downside. Interviewed in the previous week, GTS’s Reggie Browne explained that these products could be used in the annuity market, a market that is worth USD3 trillion.

‘A gem within Deutsche Bank’ is how DWS was recently described and one of the most sparkly facets of that gem must be its ETF business, which recently announced that the third quarter of 2019 saw DWS Xtrackers ETPs break through the EUR100 billion mark in assets under management. Total assets of EUR104.9 billion globally make it the second largest ETF manufacturer and promoter in Europe, and the first Europe-headquartered ETF business to achieve EUR100 billion in assets under management. Read our interview with Manooj Mistry, Head of Index Investing at the firm.

This week’s ETF Express newsletter opens with an interview with Nasdaq’s Steve Oh, head of ETF Listings and Business Development at the exchange. Nasdaq was the first electronic trading exchange and still prides itself on its technology. We also have the launch of REX Shares’ latest Microsectors ETN, focusing on FANG+, and GraniteShares reports on the launch in the UK of its single stock short and leveraged ETPs, all in time for active traders hoping to sail profitably through the UK’s December election.

This week, in response to our piece a few weeks ago on the problems UK platforms have with including an ETF offering, Philippa Aylmer has talked to a number of participants in the wealth and ETF industry in the UK. Read her findings in our piece.

Last week saw the ETF Express team in New York hosting the inaugural US ETF awards with a very well attended and popular event. Many congratulations to our worthy winners.

This week's newsletter features an interview with technology supplier Horizon on the firm's increased offering in the ETF space which will include fixed income, says CEO, Sylvain Thieullent.

Our journey around the stock exchanges comes a little closer to home this week for those of us based in the UK. We have an interview with Lida Eslami, head of business development for ETPs at the exchange. The gold rush from earlier this year saw gold ETPs become the most traded of equities on the exchange which shows the combined power of the precious metal and the ETP.

This week saw the London-based Inside ETFs conference and we have a piece based on KraneShares’ Brendan Ahern presentation at the event on the growing strength of China and the current rebalancing of the indices to include more China A-Shares. Watch out which index or ETF you pick in this market, Ahern warns, recommending that investors seek out the growth stocks represented by the new China internet and e-commerce sector.