The Asia Pacific ex-Japan industry had 761 ETFs/ETPs, with 904 listings, with assets of $119.4 billion, from 115 providers listed on 17 exchanges in 13 countries at the end of October 2015, according to ETFGI’s Global ETF and ETP Insights report for October 2015.

The difference between ETFs and ETPs is that the former are typically open-ended, index-based funds and can be bought and sold like ordinary shares on a stock exchange; ETPs have similarities to ETFs in the way they trade and settle but do not use an open-end fund structure. The use of other structures including unsecured debt, grantor trusts, partnerships, and commodity pools by ETPs can, in addition to a significantly different risk profile, create different tax and regulatory implications for investors when compared to ETFs, which are funds.

In the first ten months of 2015, record levels of net new assets were gathered by ETFs/ETPs listed globally with net inflows of $287.3 billion, a 22.3 per cent increase over the prior record set at this time last year.

In the US net inflows reached $174.8 billion, which is 12.4 per cent higher than the prior record set in 2013. In Europe, year to date net inflows climbed to an all-time record of $68.6 billion, representing a 22.7 per cent increase on the record set YTD through end of October 2014. In Japan, YTD net inflows were up 121.9 per cent on the record set last year, standing at $35.0 billion at the end of October 2015.
 
“Equity markets performed well globally in October: the Dow was up 9 per cent; the S&P 500 was 8 per cent, all 10 sectors of the S&P 500 were up for the month, developed markets gained 7 per cent, emerging markets were up 8 per cent. Investors put net money into riskier assets including emerging market equities in October,” said Deborah Fuhr, managing partner at ETFGI.