| Brave new world for ETF Express As many of you will know, we have been planning our platform migration and redesign for a little while and this week was the week in which it finally happened. We are now on a considerably more intuitive and flexible platform, and we have a new SEO-enhanced design. Stick with us as we iron out some wrinkles but I hope you like the new look. As our new banner says, we have been bringing you ETF news and analysis since 2006 and our archive has successfully migrated along with everything else on the site. Use the search button to delve into all of our past stories back to 2006.
Gill Wadsworth interviewed Nick Kalivas, head of factor and core equity product strategy at Invesco, this week, who has noted that plummeting share prices from the US’s biggest companies is leading investors to ditch cap-weighted indexes ETF in favour of their balanced weighted counterparts.
Kalivas says the asset manager’s S&P 500 Equal Weight ETF (RSP) achieved more than USD4 billion in year-to-date inflows, with over USD1 billion entering the fund since October, including USD 260 million in just one day.
"Cap weighted indexes have a high degree of exposure to mega cap growth names, and this has been a year where they have fallen out of favour. One of the reasons that equal weight is an attractive alternative is that they mitigate your concentration risk by spreading your investment across the S&P 500 rather than being dominated by just a few large companies that, this year, have proved a drag on returns," Kalivas says.
BlackRock hosted an event this week, discussing the digital revolution for savers with representatives of online investment platforms from Europe. The firm notes that neobrokers and neobanks have expanded across Europe at an incredible rate. "Wealth management platform Scalable Capital is active in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, and Austria, whilst neobroker BUX is available in the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, France, Belgium, Ireland, Spain, and Italy. At the end of October, Trade Republic increased its ETF savings plans offering, and is now available in 17 European markets," BlackRock writes.
This builds on the momentum seen in Germany, where the number of ETF savings plans managed via digital investing platforms is likely to rise to 20 million monthly contributions by 2026 – from currently 4.9 million, the firm says. It is estimated that one in four Germans will have an ETF savings plan by 2026.
Turning to the UK, BlackRock notes that as digital investing becomes the fastest growing segment for wealth investors, it will be crucial for both traditional and challenger investment providers to reach this next generation of digitally savvy UK investors with simple and accessible wealth offerings which meet their financial needs. Nick Hutton, Head of BlackRock’s UK iShares & Wealth business says: "Looking forward, our prediction is that the number of digital investing customers in the UK will reach 20 million by 2030."
Beverly Chandler, Managing Editor
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