The great flood of money in listed index funds, so-called ETFs, is ebbing noticeably.
After record inflows of $ 136.3 billion in March of this year, investors invested $ 105.4 billion in April and just $ 95.6 billion in May in these funds, which simply track the composition of a securities index like the S&P 500.
This emerges from the latest market data, which the world's largest ETF provider Blackrock and the French fund company Amundi commented on Wednesday.
Tim Kanning
Editor in business.
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With the recent rise in inflation rates in America and Europe, interest in inflation-linked bond ETFs has increased significantly.
After these products had a niche existence for years and recorded high outflows in some months, according to the data from Blackrock, several billion dollars have been flowing into them month after month since mid-2020.
In May of this year it was even higher than ever before, namely $ 4.4 billion.
Better returns
So far this year, investors have put a total of more than $ 17 billion in inflation-protected index funds.
According to Nomura, inflation-linked bonds have outperformed traditional fixed income over the year to date.
With a positive performance of 0.8 percent, they outperformed federal bonds (minus 3.2 percent) and US government bonds (minus 3.5 percent), for example.
The demand for exchange-traded gold funds has also increased again, as Amundi points out: while investors withdrew around 3 billion euros from this segment in February and March, another 900 million euros flowed in in May.
ETF investors also showed great interest in European stocks. According to Blackrock, ETFs accrued $ 8.7 billion in this segment, as much as last in May 2017. A good two-thirds flowed into funds set up in America - this suggests that Americans are increasingly interested in European stocks.