Australian ETF industry’s AUM up in November

Oksana Patron

14 December 2022

Strong performance in global and Australian sharemarkets contributed to continued growth in the Australian exchange traded funds (ETFs) industry in November, leading to a 3.4% growth in the industry’s assets under management (AUM) and increasing a total monthly cap to $4.4 billion, according to BetaShares Australian ETF Review.

The industry finished the month at $136.1 billion, edging closer to the all-time record level of 4136.9 billion in December 2021.

The sharemarket rally accounted for the bulk growth of the industry this month, with ~25% of the growth attributable to net flows (net new money), which amounted to $1.1B.

But the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) ETF trading value decreased 9% month on month for a total of $9.7 billion.

At the same time, industry growth over the last 12 months remained positive, albeit slow, with an increase of 2.5% year on year, or $3.3 billion.

Additionally, last month saw  Cosmos delisted their remaining two funds (Etherum and Bitcoin), after delisting crypto equities fund, and the Chinese re-opening caused Chinese and Asian focused ETFs to rally this month, after a very difficult period for performance for this region.

As such Asian exposures were the best performers in November – this included China Large Cap, as well as BetaShares Asia Technology Tigers ETF which recorded ~23% monthly performance.

Following this, fixed income was the asset class category recording the highest level of flows this month ($333 million in net flows) with investors increasingly perceiving that ‘the worst may be over’ for further yield increases.

Australian equities followed ($330 million) with continued buying in broad market Australian equity exposures.

Overall net flows at a category level were muted and primarily came from gold and cash outflows.

According to the report, there were also four new product launched in November including the launch of a copper exposure and two actively managed strategies from JP Morgan, marking the Firm’s entrance into the Australian ETF industry, and BetaShares Interest Rate Hedged Australian Corporate Bond ETF (HCRD).