The Weekend Edition: The rise and rise of ETFs
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What are ETFs and why are they becoming so popular right now?
ETFs exchange traded funds are becoming increasingly popular. So who is buying them and what are they buying? Because it's just like buying shares, but you can buy anything from fixed income to commodities to real estate. What's driving this popularity? How do they work? And what's next? That's this weekend's podcast. The morning call from NAB with Phil Dobby. The weekend edition. Well, ETFs have been around since the early nineties, but it feels like they've become more mainstream since the pandemic, I think. At least that's my interpretation of it. So how popular are they? What are people buying? Who is buying them? And where next? There's lots of questions. Let's explore it all a bit more with Sharma DeSilva, who's head of fixed income uh at BetaShares, where he manages fixed income ETFs as part of their portfolio.
So this is an interesting place to start. Because I'm sure many people think of ETFs as relating to shares, perhaps because it's just like buying shares, isn't it? But there are a lot of options to buy fixed income, treasuries, corporate bonds. It's an easy way for the retail investor to get into the bond market, so I guess that's attractive to a lot of people.
Yeah, absolutely. And uh thanks for having me on, Phil. Uh um it's really good to be here. Um I guess you can think about ETFs as almost being a bit of a uh technological evolution um of the uh traditional uh managed fund. Um so you know, existing man managed funds have been around for for a very long time, but ETFs are, you know, relatively uh recent. Um, you know, it really started in the uh in the early nineties in in North America. Um And you know, they uh arrived in Australia around uh ten years later. But um you're correct in that they have really taken off um in in recent years and and it's really been um uh uh really about providing, I guess, greater access uh to a broad range of asset classes.
Um so they have in many ways the uh I guess the investor experience of uh trading, you know, a listed share. Um, but you know, you can get uh
How fast have Australian ETFs grown and what is their current market size?
um exposures to many different underlying assets, whether it is, you know, shares, Australian or global, uh, fixed income um or even currencies uh and commodities. Uh the ETFs are just a very uh efficient, transparent, uh low cost wrapper um that you know more and more investors uh are using as their I guess primary investment vehicles.
And how much is it growing by? And what sort of what percentage of the market does it now take, do you think?
Yeah, so uh you know, globally the the ETF industry is well over uh ten trillion US uh dollars. But uh in in Australia the growth has been um very strong, especially over the past ten years. So, you know, since you know two thousand and fourteen the uh the overall ETF industry in this country has grown from around fifteen billion uh Australian dollars to around two hundred and twenty uh billion uh today. So it's It's uh you know pretty significant uh growth. And that's um uh and and again ETFs have been, you know, for many investors, uh, you know, their first investment product. Um and just in terms of I guess you know the the types of assets uh that ETFs investors are investing in, you know, it's um predominantly uh equities, um, Australian equities uh and international equity.
So equity ETFs. ETFs of that two hundred and twenty billion um account for around one hundred and eighty uh billion. Um although, you know, there's um also uh what's becoming quite a substantial uh amount of assets also in in fixed income also, which is r roughly around thirty billion uh today.
And it's and it I guess it's n not only is it is an easier road into fixed income, it's also an easier road into foreign equities as well, isn't it? So that's you know, so it i it is a good way of broadening your portfolio.
That's right. So I guess one of the great advantages of uh ETFs is that you know you can basically uh trade an entire diversified portfolio of securities, whether that's stocks and bonds, uh that could be, you know, uh across many different regions, um, but all in one trade executed on on your local uh stock exchange.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What are ETFs and why are they becoming so popular right now?
0:01–2:01
2
How fast have Australian ETFs grown and what is their current market size?
2:01–5:15
3
What role do liquidity and market makers play in ETF trading?
5:15–7:46
4
What drove the surge in fixed‑income ETF flows during 2022‑2023?
7:46–11:12
5
How are active ETFs expanding and how do they compare to passive ETFs in Australia?
11:12–14:19
6
How does intraday trading give ETF investors flexibility versus traditional funds?
14:19–17:12
7
Why are self‑managed super funds (SMSFs) major users of ETFs?
17:12–20:29
8
What recent flow trends reveal about investor sentiment toward equities and bonds?
20:29–22:48