Assets in US-listed exchange traded funds and exchange traded products broke through the USD1trn milestone – reaching USD1.027trn – for the first time on 16 December, according to BlackRock’s global ETF research and implementation strategy team.
As of 16 December 2010, there were 894 ETFs in the US with assets of USD887.2bn from 28 providers on two exchanges.
At the end of December 2009 the US ETF industry had 772 ETFs, assets of USD705.5bn, from 29 providers on two exchanges.
Year to date, 171 new ETFs have been launched in the US with another 828 new ETFs in the pipeline, while 49 ETFs were delisted.
Additionally, as of 16 December 2010, there were 185 ETPs listed in the US with assets of USD115.5bn, from 20 providers on one exchange. At the end of December 2009, there were 142 ETPs with assets of USD88.1bn from 17 providers on one exchange.
Growth in the US market for ETFs and ETPs reflects expansion in the use of the vehicle through retail channels, as well as their continuing popularity among institutional investors of all kinds, 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.
“ETF providers are expanding their product ranges into more specialized areas to cater to the growing number of professional and retail investors using ETFs as advanced portfolio construction tools. The increasing availability of these highly-specialised 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 to take advantage of new investment opportunities – with complete transparency into the underlying investments as well as low cost.”
