Fund Launches and Updates

Legal & General Investment Management has expanded its thematic range with the launch of Europe’s first hydrogen economy ETF. The L&G Hydrogen Economy UCITS ETF (HTWO) is listed on the London Stock Exchange, Deutsche Boerse, Borsa Italiana and the SIX Swiss Exchange with a TER of 0.49%. Link

Agio Funds TFI listed a Nasdaq-100 ETF on Warsaw Stock Exchange. Link

UBS Global Asset Management has launched two new carry trade commodity futures ETFs on Xetra and Börse Frankfurt.

CSOP Asset Management has launched the first Hong Kong exchange traded fund to track China’s Star Market. Link

Next month, VanEck will be launching a social sentiment exchange traded fund. The fund will invest in the stocks being most talked up on social media. The VanEck Vectors Social Sentiment ETF is actually a revival of a previous fund that barely got off the ground. Link

Nuveen and State Street Global Advisors have expanded their ETF partnership with the launch of the SPDR Nuveen Municipal Bond ETF (MBND). MBND is actively managed by Nuveen’s municipal bond team. Link

T.Rowe Price is planning to launch a new non-transparent actively managed ETF and has submitted a filing to the SEC for the T. Rowe Price US Equity Research ETF. Similar to Fidelity’s recent launches, the new ETF is cloning an existing mutual fund strategy — the firm’s $6.2bn T. Rowe Price US Equity Research mutual fund. Link

Flows

21Shares has seen its suite of crypto ETPs break through $500m assets under management (AUM) amid a surge in performance and increasing institutional demand for alternative currencies. Link

Dimensional Fund Advisors is already making waves in the $5.9 trillion exchange-traded fund market.

The $601 billion manager founded by David Booth has amassed over $700 million among its three debut ETFs, which launched in November and December, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The actively managed trio has absorbed roughly $337 million so far in 2021. Link

Noteworthy

European ETF issuers have intensified their focus on the Nordic region, with a number of firms recently bolstering their sales efforts in the region as they report increasing demand for their products from Nordic clients. Link

Two big moves last week at Amundi and BlackRock. Valérie Baudson will be taking the helm from Yves Perrier as CEO at Amundi. News of her promotion came just after BlackRock said that Stephen Cohen would become European chief, replacing Rachel Lord who is being redeployed to Asia.  Link

In an FT interview with Standard Life Aberdeen CEO Stephen Bird cold water is poured over press reports over the scale of his ambitions to compete against the giant ETF businesses.

“We have to participate in ETFs when they are the most efficient delivery mechanism. We have more new ETFs in the pipeline but we are not going to become a 5 basis points index fund provider,” he says. Link

ETFS Capital, the ETF investment company chaired by ETF industry veteran Graham Tuckwell, has acquired the business of ETF.com from Cboe Global Markets (Cboe). Link

The Financial Times is returning to the index business by partnering with Wilshire, an investment advisory group, to develop indices with a particular focus on environmental, social and governance investment products. Link

With the uptake of thematic ETFs, some are debating the odds that Cathie Wood and Ark Investment Management bring its range of active ETFs to European investors.

Not necessarily – plenty of large U.S. ETF issuers have yet to jump the pond and if you look at recent 13F filings, ARKK already has a decent number of foreign investors. Time will tell. Link

So-called “direct indexing” is threatening to disrupt the rapidly growing global retail market for exchange traded funds. The nascent concept allows investors to customise existing indices to create bespoke portfolios. Link

In the U.S., the top performing exchange-traded funds so far in 2021 have at least one thing in common: They all track the pot industry. The Global X Cannabis ETF (POTX), the Cannabis ETF (THCX) and Amplify Seymour Cannabis ETF (CNBS) — have returned more than 90% year-to-date. Link

The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq are suing the SEC over new rules that would force them to share more data in an effort to increase competition in the sector. Link