Exchange-traded fund investors poured more than $5 billion in net new cash into exchange-traded funds in February, as Vanguard’s expansion into the space gathered momentum at the expense of the industry’s biggest player iShares, according to data released on Tuesday by the National Stock Exchange.

State Street Global Advisors led all firms by pulling in $2.7 billion in new investments, followed by Vanguard with $2.2 billion. ProShares was a distant third with $860 million in inflows.

BlackRock, sponsor of the iShares family of ETFs and the largest ETF provider in the world, experienced $1.2 billion in net outflows. The company appeared to suffer in part from investors leaving the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (NYSEArca: EEM) and moving money into its direct competitor, the Vanguard Emerging Markets ETF (NYSEArca: VWO). EEM saw $2.4 billion in net outflows in February, the most of any ETF, while VWO pulled in $1.1 billion in net inflows, making it the second most popular ETF of the month.

The flow differential builds on a trend that has been in place for more than a year, with investors increasingly favoring VWO. The two funds track the exact same index, but VWO has a much lower expense ratio: 0.27 percent vs. 0.72 percent.

Interestingly, the most popular ETF of all in February was the SPDR S&P 500 (NYSEArca: SPY), which gathered $1.5 billion in assets.

Looking by asset class, the lion’s share of new investment flowed into U.S. equity funds for the month. Long-only U.S. equity ETFs attracted $4.9 billion in net new cash, while investors poured over $1 billion more into inverse-leverage plays on the U.S. equity space.

Fixed income performed well too, with investors pouring $2.4 billion into long fixed-income investments.

Commodities suffered, however, with investors pulling nearly $1 billion out of long commodity funds, mostly from the U.S. Oil Fund (NYSEArca: USO)—which saw $390 million in redemptions—and the U.S. Natural Gas ETF (NYSEArca: UNG)—which saw $406 million in redemptions.

Previous Page

1  |  2

Next Page