By John Spence -
Global trading volume up nearly 20% YTD - report
BOSTON (MarketWatch) -- There were 348 exchange-traded funds at the end February with assets of $313.6 billion trading on 31 global exchanges, according to new research released Tuesday by Morgan Stanley.
Year to date, worldwide ETF assets under management increased 1.7 percent, while average daily trading volumes in U.S. dollars have jumped 19.4 percent to $15 billion.
The U.S. is the largest market in terms of number of offerings and assets, with 154 funds holding $228.4 billion, said Morgan Stanley analyst Deborah Fuhr in London.
At the end of February, so far this year 12 ETFs have been launched, with 62 funds in registration.
Earlier this month, Vanguard Group introduced a trio of new Vipers ETFs tied to European, Pacific and emerging markets stock indexes. See ETF Investing.
Vanguard also unveiled expense ratio reductions in 23 of its Vipers, or Vanguard Index Participation Receipts, which are structured as separate share classes of the company's index funds. Additionally, seven of the nine Sector SPDR ETFs managed by State Street Global Advisors have reduced annual fees.
The U.S. ETF market is dominated by State Street Global Advisors, a unit of Boston-headquartered State Street Corp. (STT: news, chart, profile) , and Barclays Global Investors, the asset management arm of London-based banking giant Barclays PLC (BCS: news, chart, profile) (UK:BARC: news, chart, profile) .
Together, the two indexes accounted for roughly 84 percent of domestic ETF assets, with BGI commanding 53.1 percent market share spread over 100 funds, compared with 22 ETFs managed by State Street, according to Morgan Stanley.
Short interest levels for U.S.-listed ETFs was 17.3 percent of shares outstanding, up slightly from 16.8 percent January, when it was at the lowest level since May 2003. Short interest is used by analysts to measure bearishness in stock markets.
Source: MarketWatch
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