
Investors swing back to emerging markets ETFs

Laurent Kssis at LaBranche Structured Products Europe (LSPE) discusses European ETF trades for the week ending 8 April.
Equity ETFs have reported their fifth largest ever weekly inflows, attracting $5.65bn in new money - the equivalent of 1% of global assets under management.
Much of this came from investors returning to iShares MSCI Emerging Markets, who helped drive a dramatic three-fold increase in our secondary market volumes on the previous week.
Lyxor ETFs Russia and Eastern Europe, as well as the iShares MSCI Eastern Europe, were all also heavily in demand, while in developed markets iShares S&P 500 Monthly EUR Hedged saw creation orders worth $67m.
As the flight to equity continued to pick up momentum, bond ETFs suffered from large outflows. We helped sellers in iShares' Euro Government Bond 1-3, 3-5 and 7-10 ETFs, as well as Lyxor ETF EuroMTS 1-3Y.
Unsurprisingly though, our biggest redemptions came in iShares MSCI Japan.
Meanwhile, conflicting views on inflation around the globe coincided with a considerable increase in assets in gold ETPs. We saw sizeable additions from a number of UK institutions which, together with creations in the US, amounted to a weekly increase in holdings just short of 700,000 ounces.
Elsewhere in commodities, agriculture investments such as ETFS Grains, Wheat and Corn saw good creation orders based on our over-the-counter experience. ETF Securities has reported the largest inflows in 18 weeks to its All Commodities fund, and $25m worth of creation orders in its Copper ETC.
Altogether our primary market orders were down a third on the week before, although creation orders made up two-thirds of that activity. In the secondary market, large on-screen buyers outweighed sellers at a ratio of 3:2.
This report is not an offer to sell or a solicitation of any investment products or other financial product or service, an official confirmation of any transaction, or an official statement of LSPE.
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