A record high of $539 billion worth of assets were invested in exchange traded funds and exchange traded products in Europe at the end of July 2016, according to a new research from ETFGI, an independent research firm.
The research shows that at the end of July this year investments were made in 2,200 ETFs/ETPs from 54 providers listed on 25 exchanges in 21 countries. Investment into global ETFs space was also reported at record highs with $2.4 trillion in the U.S., $191.8 billion in Japan and $81.19 billion in Canada.
With yields for traditional investments at record lows, investors have been scrambling to find other options that involve lower fees and higher returns. Traditional forms of investments such as equities and bonds in developed markets are failing to provide enough yields due to global uncertainty - including the events surrounding the Brexit vote.
Market analysts have been advising investors to look at areas like emerging markets and other forms of investments such as index trackers that tend to pay higher returns for lower fees.
Passive aggressive?
Deborah Fuhr, managing partner at ETFGI said in an official statement that the record inflows into ETFs and ETPs are due to markets slowly returning to pre-Brexit confidence levels.
"Investor confidence returned during July after the surprising result of June's Brexit vote," Fuhr said in a press release adding that the S&P 500 was up 3.7 percent in July. "Developed markets outside the U.S. gained 5.1 percent and emerging markets were up 4.8 percent"
The report further adds that fixed income ETFs were the most popular among investors. "Fixed income ETFs/ETPs gathered the largest net inflows with $4.80 billion, followed by commodity ETFs/ETPs with $2.59 billion, and equity ETFs/ETPs with $2.20 billion."
Meanwhile, iShares gathered the largest net ETF/ETD inflows in July with $6.94 billion, followed by SPDR ETFs with $1.12 billion and ETF Securities with $1.08 billion.
Investors across the world have been excited about allocating their money into ETFs because of low fees as compared to active management. A report from S&P Global last month showed that ETFs have been growing at an annual growth rate of approximately 25 percent over the past decade, with AUM standing above $3 trillion (£2.2 trillion). This can be seen across both retail and institutional investments.
"Institutions too are increasingly using ETFs for core exposures and access to smart beta strategies," the report said.