The ETF Industry Association says net inflows into exchange-traded funds in July 2012 were $16.3 billion, according to an S&P Capital IQ report released Tuesday—up from $12.1 billion in June. For the first seven months of this year, ETF net cash flows total $89 billion, the industry group says.
Data reported by Morningstar on Monday puts net long-term ETF inflows at $13.3 billion for July and $96.2 billion year to date. The Chicago-based research group also says that the top 10 fund families collected $11.8 billion, or 89 percent of total ETF inflows.
For the first seven months of 2012, the three top ETF providers had a combined market share of about 84 percent, according to ETFIA data—with BlackRock (iShares) at 41 percent, followed by State Street with 25 percent and Vanguard with 18 percent.
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In addition, U.S. stock assets accounted for more than half of total inflows, says Morningstar, with $7.5 billion in new money—the bulk of which went to large-blend and large-value ETFs.
The main growth of ETF assets, from inflows and market results, "basically occurred in the first two months of 2012, when ETF assets were up $139 billion, or 13 percent, from where they were at year-end 2011," wrote Tom Graves, S&P Capital IQ ETF analyst, in his latest report.
Overall, ETF assets rose $31 billion, or 2.6 percent, from the end of June, he adds. As of July 31, ETF assets totaled $1.191 trillion, among 1,268 products, including 33 funds of funds.
The Vanguard MSCI Emerging Markets Fund ETF, for instance, had the largest net cash flow—at $9 billion for the first seven months, says S&P Capital IQ.
Flows into taxable-bond ETFs came to a "screeching halt," says Morningstar, as the group had inflows of just $1.2 billion, the smallest monthly intake for the asset class since February 2011.
Taxable high-yield bond funds, on the other hand, had inflows of $2.0 billion, while government bond funds shed $3.3 billion. And commodity-focused ETFs had their weakest showing year to date, losing nearly $1.6 billion, Morningstar says.
As for global ETFs, diversified emerging-markets products had inflows of close to $1.6 billion in July. Investors poured $700 million into Europe stock ETFs, the second-best month of inflows for this group since April 2011.
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Janet Levaux
Editor-in-Chief Janet Levaux has covered the financial markets since 1991, with a focus on financial advisors since 2005. After graduating from Yale and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), where she studied global economics, Janet worked as a freelance financial and business writer in Japan, and then as a reporter and editor for Investor's Business Daily and the Bay Area News Group in California. She earned an MBA in 2007 and since then has helped lead key ThinkAdvisor projects like its Neal-Award winning reporting on Ken Fisher, Luminaries awards program and Women in Wealth newsletter.
