More money flowed into Canadian ETFs in November than any month before, a report from National Bank Capital Markets shows.
Released Wednesday, the report said $13.8 billion flowed into the products, surpassing the previous monthly inflow record set in March.
Significant inflows poured into all ETF asset classes, with the bulk — $7.4 billion — going to equity funds. Fixed-income funds took in $4.1 billion in the month.
On a regional basis, Canadian equity ETFs attracted the most investor dollars at $3.6 billion, equivalent to the inflows into U.S. and international equity ETFs combined.
The report noted that on top of the broad inflows into Canadian equity ETFs, “several Canadian sectors, particularly financials … and energy reversed their months-long outflow streaks.” Meanwhile, real-estate sector ETFs “have been bleeding assets.”
Specifically, financials ETFs took in $444 million, followed by utilities with $102 million, technology with $101 million, energy with $53 million, health care with $44 million and materials with $1 million. “Other” sector-based ETFs gathered $140 million in inflows.
Real-estate sector ETFs, on the other hand, recorded $36 million in outflows.
On the fixed-income side, Canadian aggregate bond ETFs gathered $1.3 billion in inflows, followed by Canadian corporate bond ETFs with $1 billion, foreign bond ETFs with $758 million, money-market ETFs at $675 million, U.S./North American bond ETFs with $639 million, sub-investment grade bond ETFs with $283 million and preferred/convertible ETFs with $38 million.
Canadian government bond ETFs suffered $618 million in redemptions.
By maturity, broad/mixed maturity bond ETFs drove the inflows, with $3.4 billion gathered, while long-term bond ETFs recorded outflows amounting to $740 million.
Crypto-asset ETFs took in a “mild” $63 million in inflows, with flows going to “a mixed bag of crypto assets including bitcoin, XRP and Solana,” the report noted.
Commodities ETFs raked in $492 million in inflows, which the report attributed mostly to a broad-based commodity future ETF that drew investor dollars and gold bullion ETFs.
“Overall, commodities ETFs had the largest percentage flow among all asset classes in November,” it said.
Leveraged and inverse-leveraged ETFs had the second largest percentage flow among all asset classes in the month, with $615 million flowing into the category.
Multi-asset ETFs recorded inflows of $1.1 billion, largely driven by demand for asset-allocation ETFs.
ESG ETFs were in negative territory in November, with outflows of $161 million recorded, much of which was attributed to outflows from institutional-sized redemptions in the NBI Sustainable Global Equity ETF (TSX: NSGE).
“On the inflow side, demand for ESG products has been somewhat muted, with no ESG ETFs receiving more than $50 million per product,” the report noted.
Year-to-date total inflows crossed the $100-billion mark in November, reaching a “whopping” $108.7 billion by the end of the month, the report said.
New funds, providers
November also brought 12 new ETFs to market, making it a relatively subdued month for fund launches.
Two of these funds were launched by new entrants into the ETF industry — True Exposure Investments, Inc. and Rocklinc Investment Partners Inc., which introduced an ETF series for a pre-existing North American equity mutual fund (TSX: TERP) and an actively-managed global equity fund (TSX: RKLC), respectively. There are now 48 ETF issuers in the country.
There were also fund launches from Invesco, Manulife Investments, Purpose Investments Inc. and LongPoint Asset Management Inc.