Global ETF News Older than One Year
WEF-2024 Global Retail Investor Outlook
March 25, 2025--Key insights
Global capital markets have undergone a sustained fundamental shift, increasingly integrating individual investors into the financial ecosystem. This transformation has revolutionized how markets operate, establishing more accessible pathways for individuals to participate in spaces traditionally reserved for institutional and professional investors.
The 2024 Global Retail Investor Outlook identified four key structural trends shaping the retail investing landscape:
1. Investors are becoming increasingly diverse across age, geography, gender and income, demonstrating earlier interest and engagement in markets. Younger generations learn and engage in capital markets earlier than previous generations. Overall, 30% of Gen Z began investing in university or early adulthood, compared to 15% of Millennials, 9% of Gen X and 6% of Baby Boomers.
2. Between 2021 and 2024, rising inflation eroded the purchasing power of disposable income, shifting investor focus to short-term goals. Market cycles and inflation can create uncertainty and constraint for individuals; despite stocks' potential as an inflation hedge, their volatility remains a deterrent. Across asset classes, 21% of investors avoid certain products due to unpredictability, and 40% of individuals choose not to invest because they are fearful of losing money in the market.
Source: World Economic Forum (WEF)
More Record-Breaking Growth Expected as Investors Lean on ETFs to Manage Global Uncertainty: BBH 2025 Global ETF Investor Survey
March 24, 2025--The ever-increasing demand for ETFs is fueled by investor appetite for liquidity, risk management, and diverse strategies.
Brown Brothers Harriman's 12th annual Global ETF Investor Survey of institutional investors, fund managers and financial advisors identifies a paradigm shift across the ETF landscape. The report reveals that a remarkable 95% of investors intend to increase their ETF allocations over the next 12 months, an increase from 82% in last year's survey.
This sentiment portends that investors will continue to utilize the flexibility of the ETF wrapper in the face of heightened volatility, by leveraging the wide range of asset classes and strategies that are now available in ETF form.
Additionally, nearly 30% of investors plan to re-allocate from both actively-managed and index-based mutual funds to ETFs, while 33% plan to shift their passive allocation (mutual funds and ETFs) to active ETFs over the next 12 months, underscoring continuing market trends.
Source: Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH)
OECD- Global Debt Report 2025
Financing Growth in a Challenging Debt Market Environment
March 20, 2025—Introduction
Global debt markets played a key role in supporting the recoveries from the 2008 financial crisis and COVID-19 pandemic, continuously providing capital to governments and companies. But their role needs to shift from supporting recovery to financing investment and growth. This will be a challenge. Debt levels are already high and increasingly costly, economic growth is slowing, and geopolitical risks are rising.
The second edition of the Global Debt Report analyses the latest trends in global sovereign and corporate debt markets up to the end of 2024. It also looks at sovereign borrowing in emerging markets and developing economies and assesses how debt markets could help finance the climate transition.
$25 trillion-sovereign and corporate bond borrowing in 2024, nearly three times the 2007 level
$100+ trillion-total sovereign and corporate bond debt worldwide
40%-amount of OECD sovereign and global corporate bond debt maturing by 2027
Both sovereign and corporate borrowing continued to rise in 2024 and are expected to rise further in 2025
Sovereign bond issuance in OECD countries is projected to reach a record USD 17 trillion in 2025, up from USD 14 trillion in 2023. Emerging markets and developing economies' (EMDE) borrowing from debt markets has also grown significantly, from around USD 1 trillion in 2007 to over USD 3 trillion in 2024.
Source: OECD
Infographic-Charted: Global Economic Policy Uncertainty (1997-2025)
March 17, 2025---Key Takeaways
-In January, the Economic Policy Uncertainty Index surged to 428.9, hovering near COVID-19 highs.
This index has tracked global economies since 1997, leveraging a variety of metrics ranging from media coverage of trade to differences in economic forecasts by the Federal Reserve.
New trade wars are driving up uncertainty, as range of consumer goods-from groceries to automotives-could rise in price.
Today, economic policy uncertainty is surging to its highest point since 2020.
As Trump tariffs stand to recalibrate supply chains, the U.S. stock market has whipsawed in response. So far, Canada and Europe have hit the U.S. with retaliatory tariffs while businesses around the world are looking to diversify supply chains as they brace for tariffs.
Source: visualcapitalist.com
IMF-Global Financial Stability Note-Pension Funds and Financial Stability
March 6, 2025-Summary
This Global Financial Stability Note examines the growth of the pension fund sector and the potential financial stability implications. Historically, pension funds have been seen as a contributor to financial stability because of their long-term and well-diversified liabilities.
However, the sector has undergone significant structural shifts accelerated by a prolonged period of low interest rates, increasing its exposure to traditional risks while introducing emerging risks; this is reflected in growing intra-financial sector interconnectedness and exposure to long-term sovereign bonds. The recent transition to higher interest rates should be positive for the pension sector, albeit its pace and abruptness has been associated with liquidity stress and contagion risks in some countries.
Source: imf.org
OECD-States of Fragility 2025
February 18, 2025-States of Fragility 2025 considers a world of shifting power dynamics, where the most severe impacts of crisis, conflict and instability converge in the 61 contexts identified with high and extreme fragility. Multidimensional fragility lies at the core of the geopolitical shifts that are disrupting decades long global power equilibria, creating challenges and opportunities that require deep reflection and rapid adaptation across humanitarian, development and peace communities.
The report analyses the state of fragility in 2025, how it shapes global structural trends, current responses to it, and how it is perceived and tackled by the people most exposed to its impact: the 2 billion people in contexts with high and extreme fragility that account for 25% of the world’s population but 72% of the world’s extreme poor. Maintaining a focus on the furthest behind is more critical than ever for development partners, as a global good and a geostrategic necessity.
Fragility is the combination of exposure to risk and the insufficient resilience of a state, system and/or community to manage, absorb or mitigate those risks. The OECD multidimensional fragility framework assesses fragility based on 56 indicators of risk and resilience across six dimensions: economic, environmental, political, security, societal and human. This provides the analytical foundation for the States of Fragility report series and online platform.
Source: oecd.org
ETFGI reports assets invested in the global ETFs industry surpassed the hedge fund industry by US$10.33 trillion at the end of 2024
February 17, 2025-ETFGI, a leading independent research and consultancy firm renowned for its expertise in subscription research, consulting services, events, and ETF TV on global ETF industry trends, reported today that assets invested in the global ETFs industry surpassed the hedge fund industry by US$10.33 trillion at the end of 2024. (All dollar values in USD unless otherwise noted.)
Highlights
Assets invested in the global ETFs industry surpassed the hedge fund industry by US$10.33 trillion at the end of 2024
The global hedge fund industry gathered net outflows of $12.6 billion during Q4 2024 while ETFs/ETPs gathered net inflows of $639.06 billion.
The HFRI Fund Weighted Composite Index was up 1.42%, while the S&P 500 Index with dividends has increased 2.41% in Q4 2024.
Source: ETFGI
Global Economy Stabilizes, But Developing Economies Face Tougher Slog
February 16, 2025--Global Economy Stabilizes, But Developing Economies Face Tougher Slog
Long-Term Growth Outlook is Weakest Since Start of the Century
Developing economies-which fuel 60 percent of global growth-are projected to finish the first quarter of the 21st century with the weakest long-term growth outlook since 2000, according to the World Bank's latest Global Economic Prospects report.
Even as the global economy stabilizes in the next two years, developing economies are expected to make slower progress in catching up with the income levels of advanced economies.
The global economy is projected to expand by 2.7% in both 2025 and 2026, the same pace as in 2024, as inflation and interest rates decline gradually. Growth in developing economies is also expected to hold steady at about 4% over the next two years. This, however, would be a weaker performance than before the pandemic-and insufficient to foster the progress necessary to alleviate poverty and achieve wider development goals.
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Source: worldbank.org
Rising Rates May Trigger Financial Instability, Complicating Fight Against Inflation
The failure of Silicon Valley Bank and other US lenders in early 2023 appeared to validate these fears. Our new research on the relationship between inflation and bank profitability helps us make sense of these concerns. Most banks are largely insulated from shifts in inflation-the exposure of income and expenses tend to offset each other. Yet some have significant inflation exposures, which may lead to financial instability if concentrated losses lead to wider panics in the banking sector. As several major central banks are reassessing their monetary policy frameworks in the aftermath of the post-pandemic inflation surge, a deeper understanding of the links between inflation and bank profitability can help design better monetary policy frameworks.
Source: IMF.org
Bybit and Block Scholes Report: Timing Altcoin Season in a Sea of Uncertainty
Traders counting on capital flows from mainstream cryptocurrencies like BTC and ETH to altcoins are betting on spurs of explosive growth-often surging by 6x to 7x in market cap, but many are finding their patience tested.
Source: Bybit
February 13, 2025-Banking systems are largely insulated from inflation, but vulnerabilities at some banks could lead to tradeoffs between containing inflation and protecting financial stability
Before the pandemic, investors worried about how persistently low inflation and interest rates would crimp bank profits. Paradoxically, they also worried about bank profitability when post-COVID reopening sent inflation and central bank interest rates soaring.
February 12, 2025--Bybit, the world's second-largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, spotlights altcoins in a report jointly released with Block Scholes, offering insights on factors that may have delayed the arrival of an altcoin boom. Titled "Altcoin Rotation-Why Altseason Hasn't Come This Time?", the report maps out consistent patterns and examines broader market dynamics to decipher signals of the next altseason, contributing to analysis on why traditional altcoin behavior has deviated in the current cycle.
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