Markets are very slowly recovering but investors are understandably still defensive. We are still examining what happened and still repairing. Our stories this week reflect that, with the examination of the Fed’s move to support the US capital markets and that staggering figure of USD1.5 trillion that it will be pumping into US Treasuries over the remainder of 2020 and our think piece from London Stock Exchange’s Ivan Gilmore. Gilmore describes the challenges that hit markets at the beginning of 2020 as ‘not only unprecedented but also hit with alarming synchronicity’.
Gilmore’s analysis from March shows that: “The average opening time for a London Stock Exchange listed ETF/ETC in March was within one minute of our official 8am start, and a mere 13 seconds later than the average for 2019. Intraday, our statistics show that circuits breakers (CBs) were triggered in large numbers over many recent weeks as global price volatility hit levels not seen since 2008. In March there were approximately 600 CBs per day for ETF/ETCs, compared to just 13 per day in 2019.”
And records were set with monthly records in March, significantly up over comparative 2019 figures. ETFs have been tested and proved themselves over this difficult period.
Over in the US, father and son team Richard and Robert Michaud lies behind New Frontier Advisors, a firm that has featured global multi-asset portfolios for over 15 years, based on 15-25 ETFs. Michaud senior is a former Wall Street quant who nowadays expresses his portfolio construction views through ETFs.
Finally, we have an interview with Aware Asset Management’s Mary Gronseth and Andrea Roemhildt who manage AWTM, an actively-managed, diversified, ETF geared toward insurance companies’ treasury management teams. It’s an interesting niche, one of a small subset of ETF products assigned the US’s National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) 2A designation.
etfLIVE Europe 2020 is very nearly here – please register now to join us on 19-21 May. Qualified professional investors go free.
Beverly Chandler
Managing Editor, ETF Express
Companies in this issue
Aberdeen Standard Investments
Aware Asset Management
BlackRock
Brompton Funds
First Trust
Fitz Partners
Franklin Templeton
London Stock Exchange
New Frontier Advisors
UBS Global Asset Management