New data out from the ASX today and is now available in the ETFtracker app. Below are some highlights including. Performance +2.4% Best Sectors Commodity: +4.3% (REIT – VanEck Vectors Intnl Property +5.7%) Property: +4.4% (driven by ETPMPD +10.9% and was also best in March 2021). Equity Australia: +3.1% Equity Global: +2.8% Best ETFs LNAS: +18.6% GGUS: +13.6% ETPMPD: +10.9% ATEC: +7.4% Inflows +2.0bn Best net inflows AAA: +$170 million VAS: +$157 million IOZ: +$117 million FUM +106.7bn – 85% growth y/y Best 1-month FUM change MGOC: +$516 million VAS: +$337 million IOZ: +$327 million

ESG is a bit of a hot topic these days especially with more and more investors after their share of what they feel is more ethical and sustainable investing. With that in mind, it's worth exploring this theme with our data hats on. Definitions ESG - In terms of what ESG stands for, it's Environmental, Social and Governance. According to Investopedia : Environmental criteria may include a company’s energy use, waste, pollution, natural resource conservation, and treatment of animals. The criteria can also be used in evaluating any environmental risks a company might face and how the company is managing those risks. For example, are there issues related to its ownership of contaminated land, its disposal of hazardous waste, its management of toxic emissions, or its compliance with government environmental regulations? Social criteria look at the company’s business relationships. Does it work with suppliers that hold the same values as it claims to hold? Does the company donate a percentage of its profits to the local community or encourage employees to perform volunteer work there? Do the company’s working conditions show high regard for its employees’ health and safety? Are other stakeholders’ interests taken into account? With regard to governance, investors may want to know that a company uses accurate and transparent accounting methods and that stockholders are given an opportunity to vote on important issues. They may also want assurances that companies avoid conflicts of interest in their choice of board members, don't use political contributions to obtain unduly favorable treatment and, of course, don't engage in illegal practices. Link to this is here: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/environmental-social-and-governance-esg-criteria.asp Whilst not in the condition set above, when we look at ESG ETFs in this article we also include those with the "ethical" tagline because whilst the focus with those is on moral and ethical grounds of investing, we feel that they should also be included if investing of this type is being considered. Current State Recently, research house Investment Trends was commissioned to do some work for superannuation provider Australian Ethical and were able to provide a good gauge on the state of ESG investing in Australia in 2021 so far. Across the 2,000 respondents they interviewed they had the following findings: 78% of self identified ESG investors plan to invest based on environmental factors (after this it was governance (46%), social issues (34%) and indigenous (31%). 1 year ago it was 58% for environmental. 74% of Gen Z invested in ESG – majority wanting to tackle climate change whilst building wealth Aussie investors were most interested in: Clean and renewable energy Carbon emission reduction Reduced energy usage There has been an Increase in financial planners who offer advice on ESG products to 40 in 2020. It was less than 20 in 2015 and growth looks steady. Familiarity of ESG across investors was higher in investors who receive financial advice: Advised investors: 52% Non-advised: 42% A 3rd of super funds can be considered ESG funds To access the article you'll need to have an AFR subscription and the link is here: https://www.afr.com/companies/financial-services/green-investing-demand-jumps-34pc-in-12-months-20210422-p57lf8 Screening There are 2 types of investment screens being done in this space, positive and negative screening. Positive screening looks for leaders in their space whether its focusing on only 1 or multiple elements of ESG. Negative looks to screen out unwanted types of holdings (e.g. weapons, tobacco, adult entertainment etc). Depending on the type of screening done by the ETF, you will get different types of holdings. Australian ESG related ETFs There are 18 ASX listed and 2 Chi-X listed ESG ETFs and these are as follows: CLNE - VanEck Vectors Global Clean Energy ETF DBBF - BetaShares Ethical Diversified Balanced ETF DGGF - BetaShares Ethical Diversified Growth ETF DZZF - BetaShares Ethical High Growth ETFE200 - SPDR S&P/ASX 200 ESG Fund E200 - SPDR S&P/ASX 200 ESG Fund ERTH - BetaShares Climate Change Innovation ETF ESGI - Vaneck Vectors MSCI International Sustainable Equity ETF ETHI - BetaShares Global Sustainability Leaders ETF FAIR - BetaShares Australian Sustainability Leaders ETF GBND - BetaShares Sustainability leaders Diversified Bond ETF - Currency Hedged GRNV - VanEck Vectors MSCI Australian Sustainable Equity ETF HETH - BetaShares Global Sustainability Leaders ETF - Currency Hedged IMPQ - eInvest Future Impact Small Caps Fund (Managed Fund) INES - Intelligent Investor Ethical Share Fund (Managed Fund) MCSE - MFG Core ESG Fund MSUF - Magellan Sustainable Fund RARI - Russell Investments Australian Responsible Investment ETF VEFI - Vanguard Ethically Conscious Global Aggregate Bond Index (Hedged) ETF VESG - Vanguard Ethically Conscious International Shares Index ETF VETH - Vanguard Ethically Conscious Australian Shares ETF Metrics In this section we take a look at some of the statistics relating to ESG ETFs over the years. FUM Funds under management has grown to $3.3 billion as of March 2021 and the pace of growth has certainly accelerated as we can see below. 2020 was a year of leaps and bounds for ESG ETFs as investors continued to pile in. Net Inflows Net Inflows for ESG related ETFs had a record year in 2020 and into 2021 with the best months being February 2020 ($218m), November 2020 ($201m) and March 2021 ($186m). Most inflows are into ETHI and FAIR products with $988m and $843m followed by VESG and RARI (both at $225m). Performance Whilst it's not necessarily fair to look at ETFs across asset classes (for example, bond ETFs won't return as much as equity ETFs), at the highest level of categorisation (ESG vs Others), we found that since January 2020, ESG outperformed non-ESG with cumulative total price returns of +11% versus +8%. Again, it's a broad brushstroke but looking at different asset classes will tell more of a detailed story and we can do that deeper dive in future articles. Since the total price return data is monthly, we can rely on share price returns data (in this case from Yahoo Finance) to showcase more granularity when it comes to showcasing top ESG performers. We see that INES and IMPQ were the top performers followed by ETHI, VESG and ESGI. This is share price performance only and does not take into account dividend redistributions. Additionally, the figures are baselined to 100. Holdings At a high-level, looking at the commonality across holdings we can see that not all ESG related ETFs are the same. In analysis of equity related ETFs that showcase their holdings in detail (e.g. passive ones), what we found was that the most commonly held sector was Financials at nearly 18%. This was followed by Health Care at 15%, Information Technology at 15% and Consumer Discretionary at 11%. The average holding in cash is high at 10%. The figures below come from 15 of the ESG ETFs which have equity sector exposure (including the 3 hybrid ethical ETFs from BetaShares, DBBF, DGGF and DZZF). The spread across these ETFs is quite different (as can be seen below) where not only are the percentages in each sector different, but some ETFs do not even cover some sectors like energy or have a large amount of holdings in cash and other investments. This analysis was done as of 26th April 2021 so figures may have changed slightly. Conclusion Whatever you end up doing with getting more ESG ETFs into your investing or avoiding it all together, the analysis should be based on what's under the hood in terms of holdings, what the various metrics are telling you (liquidity, net inflows, performance) and how well does this ETF fit in with other assets in your portfolio. Additionally, depending on your style, active or passive ETFs may be the best fit for you. It's well worth doing the research to see which is best for you. Everyone's goals might be different but what is certainly true, is that ESG investing has continued to see strong growth and is building up a good infrastructure to make sure it's here to stay.

With the addition of Coinbase (NYSE:COIN) to the world of equities, it seems blockchain related investing is going from strength to strength. Upon closing at $328.28 a share, this gave a market cap of over USD $85 billion for the crypto exchange and a lot of attention gained for the future of the bitcoin, blockchain and distributed ledger technology. For context, that would put it in the top 100 of the S&P 500 companies by marekt cap, and bigger than General Motors, Gilead Sciences and others. So how far away are we from seeing a blockchain ETF? Well, it’s still awaiting approval from the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) in the US but the ETF Issuer, WisdomTree was able to list their bitcoin related exchange traded product, WBIT (WisdomTree Bitcoin ETP) on the Toronto Stock Exchange. More recently, Van Eck filled in their 19b-4 form in mid-March 2021 which would see them list a Bitcoin Trust ETF (see CBOE BZX Exchange Rulemaking page). However, all previous attempts have failed, including a 2018 attempt from the Winklevoss twins (of pre-Facebook fame) who had their attempt at a bitcoin ETF rejected (Winklevoss twins bitcoin ETF rejected by SEC) and it wasn’t their first. Despite these rejections, with the incoming chair Gary Gensler being bullish on crpyto and blockchain the signs look far more positive this time. ** Update to paragraph above - as of April 24, the SEC has also begun the review process of another bitcoin ETF, this time from Kryptcoin. They tried, and failed back in 2019 ** One of the issues facing any bitcoin or blockchain related ETF is the lack of investment options available for any issuer who creates one of these. There's less choice than other ETFs since the blockchain and distributed ledger environment is still growing. That said, there are still a number of options out there to invest in including the following equities: HIVE – cryptocurrency mining company based in Canada, Sweden and Iceland COIN – Coinbase, recently listed blockchain exchange MSTR – Microstrategy, a software company that has over 90,000 bitcoins TSLA – Tesla has made significant investments in Bitcoin, using $1.5 billion of cash reseres to invest into the cryptocurrency - but it has paid off with them making $1 billion from this investment There are global ETFs that investors can get into as well: ARKF – Ark Fintech Innovation ETF which invests in blockchain technology BLOK – Amplify Transformational Data Sharing ETF BLCN – Reality Shares Nasdaq NexGen Economy ETF LEGR – First Trust Indxx Innovative Transaction & Process ETF KOIN – Capital Link Global Fintech Leaders ETF Some investors may look to BUZZ as a potential option given that this VanEck product has "social sentiment" on its label but the definition of what it invests in is large cap US equities and crypto does not cut it. Closer to home there are also a number of investment options for locally focused investors with some of these names having blockchain focused projects and others with direct blockchain involvement: ID8 – Identitii, a company that helps financial institutions and their executives improve regulatory compliance and reduce financial crime by increasing trust in data. SMX – Security Matters, a brand protection, supply chain integrity and blockchain technology company. CM8 – Crowd Mobile, a global crowdsourcing micro job business with a focus on mobile applications. YOJ – Yojee, a technology company which has introduced new ways of working, communicating, and collaborating within the logistics industry. MBM – Mobecom, a SaaS helping businesses create customer loyalty and engagement NOV – Novatti is a leading digital banking and payments company that enables fast, simple, and secure payments DCC – DigitalX, a company specializing in blockchain application development and digital asset management services FFG – Fatfish, a tech investment firm that is focused on investments in blockchain and cryptocurrency projects; CCA – Change Financial, holds equity in blockchain and cryptocurrency business IvyProject and is in agreement to develop a blockchain and cryptocurrency technology. See more on this Stockhead article (These ASX blockchain companies are leading the distributed ledger race). Coupling all of this with news a few weeks ago that Paxos, a blockchain infrastructure provider was able to see trades settle at T+0 with partners Credit Suisse and Nomura Instinet and the future indeed looks bright. This is one of the major advantages of blockchain, it can help to imrove the current normal cycle of trade settlements of T+2 (2 days to settle orders). All signs point to it not being long until we see a listed blockchain play in the local ETF markets especially with the groundswell of support we're seeing overseas and locally, it is only a matter of time.

Ever wanted to look at ETFholdings data but found it too cumbersome to do so? We did too and that's why we created this app to make it easier for those looking at BetaShares ETFs. We will also do it for other providers too where the data is available in the formats we need but being one of the major holders of ETFs in Australia, we thought it would be a good idea to start with them. You can access the app from the Apps menu as below: Access Access to the app is here: https://www.etftracker.com.au/betashares-holdings Or you can navigate to it from the Apps menu on the homepage. Usage Firstly, you can expand the app by clicking on You should then see it full-screen: From here you can interact by choosing an ETF Sector (the various sectors that BetaShares classifies). You can also click on a particular element across the bar chart, heatmap, geogrraphic map or table. The whole thing is interactive. Here's an example of clicking on an ETF in the first bar chart (showing ETFs ranked by Notional Value). In this case we've chosen HACK. We can see that it has 454 million (AUD) in notional value, it's holdings are mostly in Information Technology and equities and Cisco Systems is it's highest holding followed by Accenture. Using the CTRL button you can actually filter on multiple selections Elements As mentioned, the first bar chart is ranking ETFs y notional value. Scroll up and down this bar chart to see where the biggest BetaShares ETFs are and which are the smallest. The heatmap is based on equity sectors so it only works where ETFs have an equity element. Asset class is a data tag that showcases what each holding relates to, Equities, Cash, Commodity Futures, other ETFs. The geographic map relates to equity holdings and shows the holdings location (likely head office location but I've not checked every single one yet). The table allows you to search specific holdings to see what ETFs those holdings belong to - e.g. Fisher & Paykel Healthcare sits in 9 ETFs. On the right hand side are 3 metrics relating to notional value, market value and number of ETFs that have been filtered. Caveats All care has been taken to ensure that the ETFs shown here show the correct holdings but this has been a manual process to do the mapping. It cannot be relied upon for investment decision making. Not all BetaShares ETFs have been mapped either. There are some that were listed but either have no holdings data available or were not able to be incorporated. The data is updated once daily so changes intra-day will not be shown. This tool is for educational and entertainment purposes only, no fees have been provided to share this insight. The purpose has been to showcase more insights into ETF markets to help end user investors, advisers, analysts, anyone with interest in ETF related data.

Yesterday, we saw Anthony Doyle, Multi-Asset specialist from Fidelity chat with Oran D'arcy, Business Development Manager from the ASX discuss emerging markets ETFs. If you missed the chat you can check it out below: In their talk they go through what's in the investable universe and it's size ($8 trillion spread across 1,300+ companies), the impacts that Covid had on tourism and commodities and more. In ETFtracker, we can use the app to take a look at Emerging Markets in a bit more detail. Here's some stats: FUM of $1.8 billion as of March 2021 (all in AUD) This is across 6 ETFs with the largest being IEM (iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF) with $938m million. This was followed by VGE (Vanguard FTSE Emerging Market Shares ETF) - $534.4m FEMX (Fidelity Global Emerging Markets Fund) - $222.5m EMKT (VanEck Vectors MSCI Multifactor Emerging Markets Equity ETF) - $47.2m EMMG (BetaShares Legg Mason Emerging Markets Fund) - $23.0m WEMG (SPDR S&P Emerging Markets Fund) - $17.6m IEM has higher level of total returns versus VGE since Jan 2020 This is using total price returns as published by the ASX/Chi-X for market returns and this assumes dividends are reinvested. Best share price returns since beginning of 2020 was EMKT followed by FEMX This is at the time of writing (936pm - 19th April 2020). Putting all 6 ETF options baselined to 100 from 1 January 2020, they all had similar trajectories but more recently, EMKT has eked away better performance ending up at 8.3% higher than the baseline. For more insights, please subscribe.

It was a long time coming but we finally uploaded a webpage and app walk through for ETFtracker onto your YouTube channel. You can access the channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT6D4YStNQP-9eeXetCStKQ First up it's the website overview which goes through the various areas and features on this site that you're on right now. Check it out below: I also had a number of articles in the blog that relate to how to use this app but here's a full video on the app features. Over the next couple of weeks I'll hone in on a specific area but for now you can check out the full overview here: The YouTube channel has a couple of other videos so please feel free to check that out and subscribe for new insights.

On Friday we were able to receive the latest Chi-X figures to round out the total Australian ETF marketplace dataset for March 2021. With these additions we see total FUM at AUD $102.7 billion, total net inflows for the month at AUD $2.5 billion, and average performance at +2.35% for the month. 2 new ETFs were added this month on the Chi-X exchange and these were: TAVF - 360 Capital Active Value Equity Fund EHF1 - Elstree Hybrid fund (Managed Fund) You can see the updated dashboard charts below and more in the ETFtracker app.

Check out this awesome animation made with Flourish (https://flourish.studio/) and using ASX and Chi-X data. It shows the growth of ETF Net Inflows ($m) since 2017. We can see Australian and Global Equities being the leaders in where investor funds are going and there has been (in late 2020) a recent push higher in global equities thanks to the listing of MGOC (AUD $12 billion in November) and HYGG (AUD $1.15 billion in March 2021). These latter 2 are direct listings of managed funds so were able to add their years of existing FUM growth. Whether synthetic or naturally occurring, it's great to see the ETF markets grow to have the AUD $102 billion in FUM they now enjoy. The chart below is interactive so click on the play/pause button or use the slider to see things at any point in time. Also, you can click on categories in the legend to filter out categories you may not want to look at.

Here's a further deep dive into some figures I'll talk about on ausbiz later on today check out www.ausbiz.com.au for more. Record $100 billion FUM... what was driving it? Global Equity ETFs - new Hyperion listing We can se that growth is now up to AUD $28.2bn for local equity ETFs and taking out MGOC from global equity ETFs, we get AUD $32.4bn. This month the leading proponent was a new listing from Hyperion (HYGG). This is its High Quality Long Term growth ETF you can learn more about here: https://www.hyperion.com.au/hyperion-global-growth-companies-fund-asx-listed-hygg/ It's had a strong record of performance since 2014 with benchmark beating figures.. It added its AUD $1.15bn worth of inflows to the Aussie market in last month. Across other ETFs, the most inflows went to the "core" type ETFs that typically make up the main area of an investors portfolio. These were IOZ ($238m) and VAS ($156m) as well as A200 ($94m). Behind that was BetaShares Australian Government Bond ETF (AGVT) with $79m of net inflows in March 2021. Positive performance in March – overall market was 2.4%. Infrastructure and Property leading the way Overall performance in March for total price returns (taking into account reinvesting of dividends) the total Australian ETF market was at +2.4%. This is the highest since the large bump in November 2020 and the bounce back in April 2020 (after market crashed in March). If all months had this level of returns we'd have nearly 30% per annum which is a very solid result. Little talked about Infrastructure and Australian Property ETFs were the top categorical performers in March 2021 with the former having an average of +6.8% total price returns and the latter at +6.5% for the month. Within Infrastructure ETFs you get access to the following: VBLD – Vanguard Global Infra index MICH – Magellan Infra fund IFRA – VanEck Global Infra They cover global holdings like CSX, Union Pacific, Dominion Energy and other major infrastructure players. Within Property, you get access to; SLF – SPDR ASX200 listed property VAP – Vanguard Aus Prop MVA – VanEck Aus Prop These have major local names in the property space including Charter Hall, Dexus, Goodman Group, Mirvac, Scentre and more. With house prices up 4.5% year-on-year in March (according to CoreLogic) and NAB Business Surveys as well as consumer and business sentiment all in the green its been a great month for these lesser spoken of ETFs. The best performing ETF in March was actually a commodity play with ETF Securities ETPMPD and that had +15.8% returns for the month but the overall commodities group was pulled down due to other ETFs having flat to negative returns. Current performance YTD – Leveraged, Value and Oil plays did well from January to now Looking at top performers (using only share price) from 1 January 2021 to 13 April 2021 we see the following: GGUS +23% VVLU +22.5% OOO +22% At the tail-end its been the leveraged short plays BBUS -22% - Bear US SNAS -19.6% - Short Nasdaq BBOZ -13.2% - Bear Australia New ETFs – focus on Decarbonisation This month also saw 5 new ETFs listed on the ASX. ERTH – BetaShares Climate Change Innovation DocuSign, Zoom, Tesla CLDD – BetaShares Cloud Computing DropBox, ZScaler, Xero CLNE – VanEck – Global Clean Energy Clean energy production / Solar QSML – Van Eck MSCI – International Small Companies Quality VLUE – VanEck MSCI International Value Note: Will update all of this when Chi-X figures for March 2021 come out later this month.

This was a bit of a different episode with this being the first time dialled in from home. Thanks to Andrew and Kara for putting up with my audio. Highlights included strong growth in FUM to over $106 billion on the back of $2bn worth of net inflows as well as another month of strong performance with the market averaging +2.4% returns . More details in the market update: https://www.etftracker.com.au/post/market-update-flash-note-april-2021 ​ Video Link: https://www.ausbiz.com.au/media/property-and-commodities-top-the-list-for-etf-flows-?videoId=10183

Highlights included the market breaking the $100 billion mark in FUM (total was over $102 billion). Additionally, overall performance was +2.4% for the month marking a solid set of green across the ETF board. More details in the market update: https://www.etftracker.com.au/post/market-update-flash-note-april-2021 ​ Video Link: https://www.ausbiz.com.au/media/aussies-continue-to-pump-up-etf-market?videoId=9100

Here's our first monthly flash note after testing this format last month. We've received the latest March 2021 data from the ASX (Chi-X insights come out mid-month so figures will adjust). Check out the slides below but more details available in the app.