Low volatility funds attract buyers

Article Excerpt

Global ETF assets as of July 31, 2019, amounted to $5.7 trillion, spread across 7,900 ETFs; this was an increase of 19% compared to the end of 2018. These ETFs are listed on 72 exchanges in 58 countries. Stock ETFs have attracted net-new inflows of $115 billion through the end of July 2019; this was sharply down from the $177 billion last year. Fixed-income and commodity ETFs added another $140 billion to bring total new money of $255 billion for the year. Fixed income has been the most popular asset class so far this year, more than doubling its assets since last year. Among the stock funds, low volatility ETFs gathered a substantial amount of new money. The most popular low-volatility ETF, the iShares MSCI USA Minimum Volatility ETF (USMV), gathered $7.5 billion bringing its total assets to $33.3 billion. This was the third-highest net inflows of any ETF, just behind the Vanguard S&P 500 and the Topix ETFs. The other…