The Van Eck Merk Gold Trust (NYSE Arca: OUNZ), launched in May 2014, has surpassed $100m in assets under management. The ETF provides investors with a convenient and cost-efficient way to buy and hold gold while also being the only ETF giving investors the option, if they desire, to take physical delivery of the metal. “We increasingly see investors drawn to OUNZ not only for the simple ETF access it provides to gold, but also its unique feature that enables investors to take delivery of their gold,” said Brandon Rakszawski, ETF Product Manager for VanEck.

State Street Global Advisors has launched two new exchange traded funds aimed at fixed income investors looking to manage ongoing bond market uncertainty. The SPDR DoubleLine Short Duration Total Return Tactical ETF and SPDR DoubleLine Emerging Markets Fixed Income ETF provide investors with exposure to US short maturity bonds and emerging market bonds respectively. James Ross, executive vice president and global head of SPDR Exchange Traded Funds at SSGA, commented: “These additions to the SPDR line-up provide investors with new actively managed fixed income ETFs that may be able to help strengthen and complement core bond holdings.”

High yield corporate bond exchange-traded funds have continued to gain favour among investors, according to credit rating agency Fitch. The trading ratio of high yield ETF shares to high yield bonds reached a record high of 42% on 11 December 2015, and subsequently reached above 20% on several days during the first two months of 2016. Robert Grossman, Managing Director, Macro Credit Research at Fitch, commented: “This is a striking shift in the market considering high yield ETF assets were just $34bn at the end of February–much lower than the $1.2tn of high yield bonds outstanding.” ETFs offer investors superior liquidity benefits compared to actual high yield bonds, a feature that may be valuable to the investor during periods of market stress and falling bond prices.

MSCI, a leading index provider to the exchange-traded funds industry, has launched the MSCI ESG Sustainable Impact Metrics (provided by MSCI ESG Research). This new framework, which builds from the Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the United Nations in September 2015, may be used to better align the exposure of future investment products such as ETFs to public companies whose products and services help to address major environmental, social and governance challenges. Launched in conjunction with the new metrics, the MSCI ACWI Sustainable Impact Index is the company’s first index to harness the new framework. To be eligible for inclusion in the index, companies must generate at least 50% of their sales from activities that promote the achievement of at least one of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

Exchange traded fund investors with exposure to the FTSE 100 index could have benefited from the index rising to 6,362 points on 13 April 2016 as mining companies and banks propelled the index up 1.5% over the course of the day. The index’s close was its highest point this year and means it has recovered 825 points (14.9%) since its lowest point this year on 11 February. The index is the principal reference for the largest stocks listed in the United Kingdom by market capitalisation and underlies a significant number of investment products such as ETFs. The largest ETF (by assets under management) tracking the FTSE 100 Index is the iShares Core FTSE 100 UCITS ETF (ISF), with over £3.8bn in AUM.

ETFs investing in sector-specific portfolios of equities may present significant advantages to investors who are looking for an efficient means to place tactical bets during earnings season. It is common to see heightened trading activity in equity markets during this time as traders attempt to capitalise on the large influx of new information to the market. Earnings season is the period of time during which a large number of publicly traded companies release their quarterly earnings reports. In general, each earnings season begins one or two weeks after the last month of each quarter (December, March, June and September). Chris Beauchamp, Senior Market Analyst, IG Group, commented: “Using these ETFs to play earnings season takes advantage of the key features of ETFs, namely their low costs.”

Assets in European listed exchange-traded funds and exchange-traded products hit a record high of $522bn in the first three months of the year, according to data from consultancy ETFGI. The figure helped boost global ETF/ETP assets return above the $3tn mark for only the second time, having first done so at the end of May last year. Net new assets in March hit $45.3bn globally marking the 26th consecutive month of net inflows. In Europe, the largest portion of investor money [$6.18bn] went into fixed income and commodities [$1.10bn]. However, these figures were offset by outflows from equity ETFs/ETPs of $2.29bn.

Structured Invest, a wholly-owned subsidiary of UniCredit Bank, has rolled out a second exchange-traded fund tracking the performance of convertible bonds from European issuers. The UC Thomson Reuters Balanced European Convertible Bond UCITS ETF (dis) (Xetra: ECBC) provides diversified investment opportunities in large, liquid convertible bonds across a variety of sectors and credit ratings. Convertible bonds are hybrid debt instruments that allow investors to participate in the upside potential of a company’s stock. The ETF may outperform in a rising rate environment when stock prices tend to increase.

The Market Vectors Fallen Angel High Yield Bond ETF finished the first quarter of 2016 as the top performing exchange-traded fund in the high yield fixed income category. The ETF invests in ‘fallen angels’ – a term used to describe bonds that were rated as investment grade at the time of their original issuance, but which have since lost their investment-grade status. According to data from Morningstar, the ETF returned 7.39% while the Bank of America Merrill Lynch US High Yield Index (a proxy for the broad US high yield bond market) returned 3.25%. Fran Rodilosso, Portfolio Manager for Fixed Income ETFs with VanEck, the asset manager behind the Market Vectors range of ETFs, commented: “ANGL presents investors with a contrarian investment approach, as it tends to increase weights in sectors as they are still under ratings pressure. One of the reasons fallen angel high yield bonds have performed well in the past is that the bonds have tended to come into the index already pricing in a high degree of risk.”

French ETF provider Amundi has launched its first Hong Kong-domiciled ETF in Asia. The Amundi Hang Seng HK 35 Index ETF is also the first ETF to track the Hang Seng HK 35 Index. Compiled by Hang Seng Indices, the Hang Seng HK 35 Index tracks 35 large cap, liquid Hong Kong companies which derive the majority of their revenue outside of China’s mainland market. Individual companies in the index are capped at 10%. Matthieu Guignard, Global Head of Product Development and Capital Markets at Amundi ETF, Indexing & Smart Beta, : “Amundi’s first listing on the Hong Kong market represents a new milestone in the group’s ETF development.”