ETF Market Flows Analysis Europe and World

The global ETF market rebounded in April, with 31.6 billion euros of inflows. Investors were first and foremost drawn by bonds (+16.5 billion euros). Equity ETF inflows totalled 11.3 billion euros. The European market continued its slowdown, ending the month with less than 700 million euros of inflows (+679 million).

Since the start of the year, the global ETF market has benefitted from 138 billion euros of investment flows.
Equity ETFs accounted for the majority: 92 billion, compared with 38 billion for fixed income ETFs. In Europe, equities also represent most of the ETF inflows: 22 billion euros collected in the first four months of the year, of which 16 billion euros went into equities and 3.8 billion into bonds.
At the global level, inflows amounted to 31.6 billion euros in April, of which almost 680 million were in Europe. On the European market, equity ETFs experienced withdrawals (-1 billion), while fixed income ETFs reached 991 million euros of inflows and commodity ETFs gained 709 million. US and emerging market equities top investments in Europe Equity outflows in April mainly affected European stocks (-2 billion for the Eurozone and -630 million for Europe).
By contrast, European investors continued to strengthen their exposure to North America (+1.5 billion), seen as less risky by investors, as well as emerging markets (+789 million). Among sectorial and thematic strategies, SRI strategies attracted the highest number of subscriptions (+113 million). Within Smart Beta approaches, Small Cap strategies kept standing out (+95 million).

A favourable context for government bonds

In the bond universe, the environment has remained unfavourable for corporate bonds (-115 million euros in April and -2.6 billion since the start of the year in Europe).
European investors focused on government bonds (+852 million euros in April and +4.6 billion since the start of the year), with a more marked interest in three segments: bonds of peripheral Eurozone countries (+255 million), US short-term bonds (+208 million) and Eurozone bonds indexed to inflation (+175 million). Conversely, investors pulled out of emerging market government bonds (-309 million).