As a market observer it is always a topic of interest to see whether European ETF investors have chased performance over the course of a calendar year. Since ETFs can be used as trading tools, such an analysis can highlight fund flow trends which may have been overlooked otherwise. That said, this article sheds a light on the fund flows within the 20 best- and worst-performing Lipper classifications in the European ETF industry over the course of 2024 (all calculations in EUR). First of all, one may realize by looking at chart 1 that neither the classification Equity U.S. (13)

A view on the market movements between April 1, 2023, and March 31, 2024, shows that it is fair to say that this period was a period in which active fund managers could have shown their asset selection and timing skills since the markets were driven by a number of different factors. Each of these factors could have caused a major market downturn on their own. There were a lot of geopolitical tensions around the globe beside the war in Ukraine, which showed that democratic states are more vulnerable than one may think. Also, there were economic factors which burdened

One of the claims for multifactor ETFs is that these ETFs are combining different factors to overcome the timing issues investors face when using single factors. In addition to this one may also think that the usage of multifactor ETFs might help to reduce the risk within the portfolio. To see if these multifactor ETFs can keep up with the expectations of the investors, we have analyzed the segment of  multifactor ETFs within the peer group Equity Global. Here are the facts: There were eight multifactor ETFs within the peer group Equity Global available in the Lipper database. Three of

Fixed income funds realized a return of positive 0.50% on average during the first quarter of 2024, marking their second straight quarterly gain and fifth plus-side quarterly return in their last six. Outside of Emerging Markets Hard Currency Debt Funds which saw nice gains thanks to a strong dollar, floating-rate and higher yielding funds were the top performers during the first quarter of 2024.

  Equity mutual funds and ETFs celebrated their fifth quarterly gain in six—with the average equity fund (+6.92%) posting its second straight quarterly plus-side return. LSEG Lipper’s U.S. Diversified Equity Funds (+9.07%) outpaced the other seven equity and mixed-assets macro-classifications for the first quarter since Q2 2023. Q1 2024 had actively managed equity funds (+7.09%) outperform their passive (+5.95%) counterparts by 114 basis points (bps), marking the fourth largest quarterly outperformance by active management since the start of 2013. In this segment, I provide a market recap plus highlight the quarterly and monthly performance results for conventional equity mutual funds

Market observers often tend to say that investors chase returns as they often buy those funds which show a high, or even the highest, performance. We saw that eight funds available to investors in Europe showed an outstanding performance of more than 100% over the course of 2023. As for this, it makes sense to analyze the estimated net fund flows for these products to see if such an assumption is true. To have a larger peer group, I extended that analysis to the 20-top performing funds in Europe over the course of 2023. According to the Lipper database, the

The analysis of the number of actively managed mutual funds and ETFs which were able to outperform their respective fund manager benchmarks depends on various factors. One of these factors is the market, which is chosen for the analysis, since some markets are considered as very efficient, hence it might be hard for active managers to generate an outperformance compared to their fund manager benchmarks after costs. A classification which is seen as natural habitat for active management is Equity Emerging Markets Global since emerging markets are considered in general as not efficient as developed markets like the U.S. stock

The year 2022 was one like no other. The war in the Ukraine, increasing inflation rates and the respective quantitative tightening programs from central banks around the globe, the still ongoing effects from the COVID-19 pandemic on supply chains, and geopolitical tensions between China and Taiwan, as well as between China and the U.S., have all on their own the potential to drive markets. Given the fact that these factors appeared at the same time, it is not surprising that equity markets around the world entered a bear market environment in 2022. With this in mind, 2022 had the potential

Rough market conditions such as those we have over the course of H1 2022 can be seen as the perfect litmus test for active managers, as such challenging periods offer a lot of opportunities for active equity fund managers to show their capabilities with regard to risk reduction and market timing. But have active equity fund managers in general outperformed their benchmarks or were they not able to add value for their investors? Even as this question does sound somewhat polemic, it goes much further as a number of market participants and observers see an underperformance of actively managed products,

Within a market environment in which all major equity and bond indices face negative returns year to date, it is somewhat surprising that European investors pulled money out of bond funds while (passive) equity funds are still enjoying estimated net inflows. Given the current economic and geopolitical situation, it is also not surprising that European investors favor mixed-assets, or so-called multi-asset funds, as they expect that these funds might be able to weather the rough market conditions in the same way they did other rough market periods in the past. But those investors might face a nasty surprise, as the

It’s fair to say that 2020 was a year like no investor has experienced before, even looking back to the Great Depression or World Wars I and II. The year began with fears of a possible war between North Korea and the U.S., an upcoming trade war between the U.S. and China, and a possible hard Brexit. In a normal year, these geopolitical tensions would have put enough pressure on the markets to cause a major downturn. But in mid-February, the coronavirus, which had previously been seen as a local problem in China, was detected in an increasing number of

Active fund managers are permanently under scrutiny in the ongoing debate about the value added by active management compared to passive products such ETFs and index funds. The debate is often driven by a view on management fees, with critics arguing that actively managed funds are too expensive and do not in most cases deliver any value added for their investors. This argument is correct if one only looks at performance tables measuring the relative performance of an actively managed fund versus its benchmark since only a minority of active managers are able to achieve an outperformance relative to their