Tradeweb, an electronic market, saw €38 billion in European exchange-traded fund (ETF) assets traded on its platform in the fourth quarter (Q4) – €5 billion higher that its previous record earlier in the year.
The firm said activity significantly increased following Donald Trump’s election victory in the US.
December was the second strongest month ever for the platform, with the volume of assets exceeding €14.2 billion.
Equity-based ETFs accounted for 67% of trading, up six percentage points on the 12-month rolling average. Buy orders in the asset class rose to 39% as a proportion of the overall traded volume, beating sells by 11 percentage points.
Within equity ETFs, emerging markets was the only class to see net selling during the month.
Despite the popularity of fixed income ETFs last year, on Tradeweb’s platform there were marginally more sells than buys in this asset class, although only by one percentage point (14% versus 13%).
More than €2.3 billion was executed in government bond and corporate bond funds, amounting for 60% of the overall fixed income ETF volume. Meanwhile, activity in commodity-based ETFs dropped to 6%, matching the previous 12-month rolling average.
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