State Street Global Investors’ SPDR SSGA Gender Diversity Index ETF (NYSE: SHE) has grown to more than $280m in assets since its launch on International Women’s Day on 8 March 2016, making it one of the most successful ETF launches of year so far. The fund invests in US companies with the most favourable ratios of women to men in executive roles and board positions. David Mazza, head of ETF and mutual fund research at SSGA, said: “Although this may be a small sample size, performance has illustrated that having a bias toward firms with more diverse leadership has led to higher returns with less drawdown in 2016.”

Nuveen, an operating division of TIAA Global Asset Management, has premiered its NuShares ETF platform with the launch of the NuShares Enhanced Yield US Aggregate Bond ETF (NYSE: NUAG). While maintaining comparable risk and credit quality characteristics as the broad US investment grade market, the fund seeks to enhance yield by increasing weights to securities and sectors that, according to a rules-based process, have the potential for higher return. Martin Kremenstein, Managing Director and Head of ETFs at Nuveen, said: “…we have worked diligently to create a product which improves the way to access a core asset class.”

New ETF issuer Amplify ETFs has acquired YieldShares in a move that will see the two firms combine their specialist development strategies to launch a range of new, jointly branded ETFs. Amplify ETFs focuses on delivering products targeting niche market segments while YieldShares focuses on income investment strategies. Christian Magoon, CEO and founder of Amplify ETFs and YieldShares, commented: “Making YieldShares a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amplify allows the firm to align our product suite with the brands that best represent the underlying strategies.”

The European Central Bank is being forced to re-evaluate how it can continue buying €80bn worth of bonds per month when there are less and less on the market with any yield. Germany’s 10-year bund yield has fallen to below zero for the first time in history, prompting Citibank analysts to say that the entire German sovereign market could be off limits for the ECB by November, as it must buy bonds that yield over 0.4%. If the ECB tapers back its bund purchases, this would most likely benefit ETFs tracking the government bonds of France, Spain and Italy as the ECB would buy their bonds instead.

According to the weekly flows report from ETF Securities, investors have increased their holdings of gold and bearish European equity ETPs ahead of the European Central Bank’s policy meeting to take place on Thursday 8 September 2016. Investors channelled $63.2m into their gold ETPs in the week ended 2 September 2016, marking the seventh week of positive inflows for the space, while inflows into short German and Italian equity ETPs surged to their highest level in 11 and 15 weeks respectively.

Online broker E*Trade has published a study showing how exchange-traded fund preferences vary by age. Based on a survey of 946 self-directed active investors with at least $10,000 in an online account, it found that Millennials are more likely than Baby Boomers to show interest in a range of less mainstream ETFs, including commodity and foreign currency ETFs. Boomers, meanwhile, prefer dividend ETFs over any other type. Similarly, Millennials are interested in style ETFs, such as growth or value, and those focused on different market-cap brackets, such as mid- or small-cap, while Boomers are distinctly less keen.

Germany-based index provider Solactive has introduced the Solactive Global Ethical Low Volatility AR EUR Index, tracking the performance of global companies with strong environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards and low volatility characteristics. Powered by ratings from Sustainalytics, a leading global analytics firm covering the ESG sector, the index has been designed to serve as the basis for future investable products such as exchange-traded funds. Simon MacMahon, Head of Research at Sustainalytics, said: “Solactive continues to take significant strides to expand the range of ESG products available to investors. We are delighted Solactive chose our research and ratings to power this index.”

Exchange-traded funds tracking Brazilian equities have soared in 2016 with the market on track to be the best performing asset category in 2016, despite ongoing political uncertainty in the country which has recently culminated in the impeachment of the country’s president Dilma Rousseff. The MSCI Brazil is up 32.7% year-to-date (1 September 2016) in local currency terms, contributing to significant gains for ETFs from iShares, Amundi, HSBC and db X-trackers which track the index.

PureFunds, in partnership with ETF Managers Group, a white-label services provider, has launched a new ETF targeting the global healthcare technology sector. The PureFunds ETFx HealthTech ETF (Nasdaq: IMED) invests in 60 companies providing transformative technology to the healthcare and medical industries. Andrew Chanin, CEO of PureFunds, commented: “[The ETF] is intended to serve as a vehicle for investors to gain exposure to this highly innovative, technology-driven slice of the broader healthcare sector.”

Invesco PowerShares has unveiled its first fixed income product in the European market with the launch of the PowerShares US High Yield Fallen Angels UCITS ETF (LSE: HYFA). The ETF is linked to an innovative time-weighted index from Citi and provides exposure to USD-denominated “Fallen Angel” bonds of North American issuers. It is based on the premise that the overly negative sentiment surrounding a downgrade to junk status causes fallen angels to be regularly oversold. According to Bryon Lake, Head of Invesco PowerShares EMEA, “the [time-weighted] index emphasises the bonds that were most recently downgraded” which “could enhance the return of the ETF by more acutely capturing the ‘fallen angel’ phenomenon.”