Assets in U.S.-listed exchange-traded funds and exchange-traded products surpassed $1 trillion for the first time, reached $1.027 trillion on Dec. 16, reports BlackRock.
As of that date, there were 894 ETFs with assets of $887.1 billion, up from 772 ETFs with assets of $705.5 billion a year earlier. And as of Dec. 16, there were 185 ETPs with assets of $115.2 billion, up from 142 ETPs with assets of $88.1 billion a year earlier.
Year-to-date, 171 new ETFs have been launched with another 828 ETFs in the pipeline. Both retail and institutional investors are driving the growth in the products, says Deborah Fuhr, global head of ETF research and implementation strategy at BlackRock.
"Increasingly, both retail and institutional investors are building global, multi-asset portfolios that are designed to capture the performance of key benchmarks for attractive market sectors—an application for which ETFs and ETPs are particularly well suited," Fuhr says.
And ETF and ETP providers will continue to offer very specialized products since ETFs have become "advanced portfolio construction tools," she adds. "The increasing availability of these highly specialized ETFs and ETPs across the full spectrum of equities, fixed income and alternative investments means that investors can use these vehicles to instantly deploy capital."
Barney is the editor of Money Management Executive, a SourceMedia publication.Follow EBN on:
