Brad Durham is co-founder and managing director at EPFR Global. The Cambridge, Mass.-based research firm tracks global fund flows, both institutional as well as retail, for financial institutions. It tracks an estimated $10 trillion in sector, country and asset class flows on a daily, weekly and monthly basis both for fixed income and equities.

Before helping to start EPFR 14 years ago, Durham was editor of publications focused on the economics and politics of emerging markets. That included launching and operating several Russian financial publications, including Kommersant and a joint venture with Hearst Corp. and Izvestia. Durham has earned a doctorate from Suffolk University Law School and a master’s degree in journalism from Boston University.

On Monday, IndexUniverse.com Editor Murray Coleman caught up with the analyst for his views on changes in the landscape of exchange-traded funds around the world.

IndexUniverse: Money has been flowing into ETFs consistently through good times and bad, haven’t they?

Durham: Yes, and we’re seeing a definite increase in activity over the past several months. Since early March, net inflows into bond ETFs have reached about $16 billion. At the same time, equity ETFs have shown about $4.6 billion inflows through July 15. Non-ETFs are a different story, though. We’ve seen some pretty big outflows in mutual funds investing predominantly in developed markets and U.S. equities. Those types of open-end mutual funds have lost $2.6 billion in net outflows since March 4. On the other hand, bond mutual funds have produced inflows of $25 billion.

Interestingly, the inflows into bond ETFs amount to about 25% of their assets. That’s a pretty eye-popping number. For example, the iShares Barclays 1-3 Year Credit Bond Index (NYSE: CSJ) has taken in $111.2 million in assets during the past 12 weeks. That’s the second-biggest; the iShares Barclays TIPS Bond (NYSE: TIP) has attracted $139.9 million in that period.

By contrast, the biggest inflows among equity ETFs has been the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (NYSE: SPY), with $649 million. The next biggest was Energy Select Sector SPDR ETF (NYSE: XLE), with $600.4 million, followed by the Vanguard Emerging Markets ETF (NYSE: VWO), with $233.3 million.

IndexUniverse: So emerging markets inflow is still very strong?

Durham: It has definitely been tapering off in the past few weeks. For example, we’ve seen about $29.1 billion in net inflow into all emerging market stock funds from the beginning of 2009 through the first week of March. That included mutual funds and ETFs. Since then—the first week of March through July 15—about $28.3 billion has flown into all types of emerging market stock funds. But a majority of those most recent inflows came at the start of the current rally.

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