Diving Deeper into March 2021 figures

Here's a further deep dive into some figures I'll talk about on ausbiz later on today check out www.ausbiz.com.au for more.

Record $100 billion FUM... what was driving it? Global Equity ETFs - new Hyperion listing

We can se that growth is now up to AUD $28.2bn for local equity ETFs and taking out MGOC from global equity ETFs, we get AUD $32.4bn.

This month the leading proponent was a new listing from Hyperion (HYGG). This is its High Quality Long Term growth ETF you can learn more about here: https://www.hyperion.com.au/hyperion-global-growth-companies-fund-asx-listed-hygg/

It's had a strong record of performance since 2014 with benchmark beating figures.. It added its AUD $1.15bn worth of inflows to the Aussie market in last month.

Across other ETFs, the most inflows went to the "core" type ETFs that typically make up the main area of an investors portfolio. These were IOZ ($238m) and VAS ($156m) as well as A200 ($94m). Behind that was BetaShares Australian Government Bond ETF (AGVT) with $79m of net inflows in March 2021.

Positive performance in March – overall market was 2.4%. Infrastructure and Property leading the way

Overall performance in March for total price returns (taking into account reinvesting of dividends) the total Australian ETF market was at +2.4%. This is the highest since the large bump in November 2020 and the bounce back in April 2020 (after market crashed in March). If all months had this level of returns we'd have nearly 30% per annum which is a very solid result.

Little talked about Infrastructure and Australian Property ETFs were the top categorical performers in March 2021 with the former having an average of +6.8% total price returns and the latter at +6.5% for the month.

Within Infrastructure ETFs you get access to the following:

• VBLD – Vanguard Global Infra index

• MICH – Magellan Infra fund

• IFRA – VanEck Global Infra

They cover global holdings like CSX, Union Pacific, Dominion Energy and other major infrastructure players.

Within Property, you get access to;

• SLF – SPDR ASX200 listed property

• VAP – Vanguard Aus Prop

• MVA – VanEck Aus Prop

These have major local names in the property space including Charter Hall, Dexus, Goodman Group, Mirvac, Scentre and more.

With house prices up 4.5% year-on-year in March (according to CoreLogic) and NAB Business Surveys as well as consumer and business sentiment all in the green its been a great month for these lesser spoken of ETFs.

The best performing ETF in March was actually a commodity play with ETF Securities ETPMPD and that had +15.8% returns for the month but the overall commodities group was pulled down due to other ETFs having flat to negative returns.

Current performance YTD – Leveraged, Value and Oil plays did well from January to now

Looking at top performers (using only share price) from 1 January 2021 to 13 April 2021 we see the following:

• GGUS +23%

• VVLU +22.5%

• OOO +22%

At the tail-end its been the leveraged short plays

• BBUS -22% - Bear US

• SNAS -19.6% - Short Nasdaq

• BBOZ -13.2% - Bear Australia

New ETFs – focus on Decarbonisation

This month also saw 5 new ETFs listed on the ASX.

• ERTH – BetaShares Climate Change Innovation

• DocuSign, Zoom, Tesla

• CLDD – BetaShares Cloud Computing

• DropBox, ZScaler, Xero

• CLNE – VanEck – Global Clean Energy

• Clean energy production / Solar

• QSML – Van Eck MSCI – International Small Companies Quality

• VLUE – VanEck MSCI International Value

Note: Will update all of this when Chi-X figures for March 2021 come out later this month.