Welcome to Issue 22 of Exchange Traded Fridays for the week ending 17th December 2021. This is our final newsletter for the year and we'll pick things up again in January 2022. Thanks to everyone who has been here since the start and if you're new, welcome to the ETF community.
In this week's news we were able to give our final update of the year on ausbiz (see here) with new data out from the ASX showing that FUM on their exchange grew to $129.9 billion in November. Coupled with Chi-X results from October this means we're at $132.2 billion and should get a full picture of November in the next week or so. Apart from that we saw a lot of market wrap ups for the end of the year as well as looking ahead to what themes are likely to play out well into 2022.
We'll see you more in the new year but in the meantime, happy holidays, happy investing and make sure you always look under the hood!
What's in this newsletter?
Local ETF Articles
Global ETF Articles
ETF Videos
ETF Podcasts
Tweet of the week
Chart of the week
ETF Education
ETFtracker App Links
ETFtracker Forum
Listen or Watch
Articles - Local
Livewire Markets - 5 thrilling themes to follow in 2022 (and the ETFs to play them) - In this article, Ally Selby goes through some ETF themes for the new year with 5 ETF insider including BetaShares' Justin Arzadon, VanEck Australia's Arian Neiron, ETF Securities' Kanish Chugh, State Street Global Advisors' Jonathan Shead and Vanguard's Ian Boater. They highlight CRYP, QUAL, SEMI, VETH and QMIX as well as some key reasons why these are great funds to look at for your portfolio.
ETF Securities - Weekly Report - w/e 10th December - Per ETF Securities report - "BetaShares Geared US Equity Fund - Ccy Hedged (GGUS) was the week’s overall top performing fund, up 9.8%. ETFS Ultra Long Nasdaq 100 Hedge Fund (LNAS) was also up 9.6% as most major markets bounced back on subsided Omicron concerns. Cosmos Global Digital Miners ETF (DIGA) was the poorest performer down 9.6%, while ETFS Ultra Short Nasdaq 100 Hedge Fund (SNAS) was down 8.8%. "
Focusing on net inflows last week, ETF Securities data saw the following:
Articles - Global
Bloomberg - Worst Run of Withdrawals in Almost a Decade Hits South Korea ETF - Flows out of South Korea and its $4.7 billion iShares MSCI South Korea ETF (ticker EWY). It's an 11th straight week of outflows right before the election next year seeing outflows of over $950 million from the fund since the beginning of October.
Invesopedia - ETFs Post a Record $1 Trillion of Inflows in 2021 - ETFs have recorded global net inflows of over $1 trillion year to date through November 2021 and Vanguard, BlackRock and State Street accounted for over 75% of this. The article goes through a few driving factors for this so check it out.
CMC Markets - Is the Direxion Moonshot Innovators ETF heading for the stars? - Direxion, an ETF Issuer, is launching its Moonshot Innovators ETF (ticker MOON) in the US which focuses on 50 companies it considers innovativ and which comes from the S&P Kensho Moonshots index (KMOON). There are details of the sectors it invests into in this article and it's no surprise that 34% of holdings are IT realted.
Financial Times - Investment advisers surpass retail as biggest holders of US-listed ETFs - new article showign that nearly two-fifths of ETFs are owned by investment advisers as retail ownership (previously the biggest group) dropped below 40% according to data from Citi. A big part of this was the US Federal Reserve decision to buy fixed income ETFs to stabilise the market. Given the rapid growth of retail investing though, ETFGI fonder Deborah Fuhr remains positive that retail investor size as part of ETFs will continue to grow.
Videos
ausbiz - Picking the next potential megatrend - 14th December 2021 - In this video the crew chat with Cameron Gleason from BetaShares and their 2 new thematic ETFs focusing on electric vehicles and digital and mobile payments with DRIV and IPAY. The underlying holdings and the reasons for these specific focus areas are dicsussed in the video. 5mins
ausbiz - Four ideas for trend thinkers in 2022 - 13th December 2021 - In this video, James Whelan from VFS Group highlights some global thematic ETFs invetors looking for trends could be interested in. This includes the iShares Global 100 ETF (IHOO), another is the FOOD ETF (taking advantage of record food prices), META and BYTE (2 ETFs from Roundhill for exposure to tech) and a Hong Kong listed ETF to take advantage of Chinese stocks de-listing from the US. 10mins
ausbiz - Day 13 | Kanish picks the 'oil of the future' - 13th December 2021 - Keeping up with the ausbiz advent calendar is this video from Kanish Chugh at ETF Securities talking about the SEMI ETF which he likens to being the "oil of the future". 2mins
ausbiz - Chi-X | Cboe Investment Series| ETF Securities | FTEC - 13th December 2021 - per the show notes "This episode features the ETF Securities Fintech & Blockchain ETF which is available for trading on Chi-X. Hear from ETF Securities Head of Product, Evan Metcalf and Chi-X’s Director – Investment Products, Oran D'Arcy. Presenter – Kylie Merritt | Managing Director, ausbiz." 6mins
Additionally we include some videos that came out late last week beginning with the video we got to be a part of:
ausbiz - Australian ETF market smashes through the $132 billion mark - 10th December 2021 - per the show notes "The ETF market continues to surge higher, with funds under management now reaching a record $132.2 billion. Mark Monfort from New Era Analytics told ausbiz that that was made up of $129.9 billion and the October FUM number from Chi-X." 9mins
ausbiz - An ETF to track mRNA technology in the era of COVID - 10th December 2021 - per the show notes "Keen for a new investment opportunity, James Whelan from VFS Group is looking to ETFs, which have seen massive capital inflows in the past year. Today, a new ETF listed in the States, brought to the market by Direxion, which looks to capitalise on the growth of mRNA technology that has been used to combat COVID." 7mins
Podcasts
ETF Trends - What's next for ETFs and the Markets? - per the show notes "Dave Nadig discusses the state of ETFs and the financial markets. Shana Sissel also offers perspective on the current market environment and explains how she’s using ETFs. Bob Minter highlights their suite of commodity and precious metal ETFs." 1hr6mins
ETF Edge - This year's top themes & 2022's "Shiny New Object" - per the show notes "CNBC's Bob Pisani spoke with Jay Jacobs, Head of Research and Strategy at Global X ETFs – along with Alex Shephard, founding partner at ETF Action. They discussed the lay of the land for ETFs this year – what the most pivotal themes and trends driving the action were – and what investors can expect as they prepare to ring in a new year for the markets. Plus, while the so-called hot “thematic” trends like ESG and crypto may appear to be all the rage, the flows may be telling a different story. In the ‘Markets 102’ portion of the podcast, Bob continue the conversation with Jay Jacobs from Global X Funds." 27mins
Social Post of the week
Perpetual - GIVE ETF Listing - Not a Tweet but rather something from a business social media platform with Perpetual's GIVE ETF launching on Monday 13th December. You can read more about GIVE here https://www.perpetual.com.au/funds/perpetual-global-innovation-share-fund-asx-idea and view the original LinkedIn post here: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6876077659303092224/
Chart of the Week In this week's chart we look at HACK which was voted by the Equity Mates community as the top ETF amongst the 20k followers on the Equity Mates Discussion Group on Facebook. We can see why when we look at these metrics - positive performance and growing inflows and trades and a lowering bid ask spread. Great stuff from BetaShares.
Further ETF Education
Getting Started with ETFs series - this is a 6 part series we created highlighting places where investors who are new to ETFs can learn more. We highlight some great materials to read, watch or listen from online and dive under the hood with ETFs over the course of the series including our way of analysing them with ETFtracker. Check it out in the link above but also here's the menu from part 1 which shows what's in the series.
Access the ETFtracker App
Access to the newest version of the ETFtracker app is here: https://www.etftracker.com.au/the-app
ETFtracker Forum and ETF Investing Australia If you're not already a member of the ETFtracker Forum then please sign up - you can access conversations and share ideas amongst peers for free. Sign up is free: https://www.etftracker.com.au/forum
Over the last few weeks we've also been getting more involved in the Facebook group/forum space and whilst we're often seen commenting on Equity Mates discussion group and others we're also helping to run a newly formed and fast growing one called ETF Investing Australia. Set up a few months ago by Chad Maurer, this group is specifically focused on Australian ETFs so if you're interested in joining a group like this to learn more about ETFs, follow the link here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/3010730665825769
ETFtracker Podcast and Videos Before we go further, if you'd prefer to consume all this content in more convenient forms of media, we've launched The ETFtracker Show as a podcast and video and Exchange Traded Fridays comes at the end of each week. Additionally, we've launched a series of interviews with various ETF market participants.
You can also access the podcast directly on our website here: https://www.etftracker.com.au/podcasts
ausbiz
If you're interested in financial news you should check out ausbiz (sign up HERE) which has so much FREE financial and business content that comes out every day and has made it easier to follow your favourite topics and market experts. We get to feature on there and you can check out our page (and give us a follow) here: https://www.ausbiz.com.au/expert/mark-monfort?expertID=179
