March Liquidation Watch List

During the month of February, we saw an increase in ETF Closures with the YTD number of Exchange-Traded-Products (ETPs) who have announced and/or actually closed – the YTD list now totals 14 closings which on an annualized basis represents a sharp increase from previous years. 

It seems no surprise that the number of closings increased as the Liquidation Watch List also swelled to a record number in listing 98 products this month.  This eclipses the previous record of 91, just one month earlier.  While these increases continue on the closing side, there seems to be no reduction in new products flooding the market with over 40 new ETPs introduced thus far in 2014.

The March 2014 Liquidation Watch List is dominated by Equity ETFs totaling 49.  These 49 equity funds are spread almost evenly among three categories:  Broad Equity, Sector and Style/Strategy.  Commodity ETPs have the second largest representation on the list with 26 funds.  Additionally, there are 11 Fixed Income ETPs, 7 Currency ETPs and 5 Multi-Asset ETPs that round out the March Liquidation Watch List.

As always, the relative size of these products’ populations by asset class provide important insight as well.  While equity products may dominate this month’s Liquidation Watch List in absolute numbers, the commodity ETPs certainly represent a far greater relative percentage of their respective asset class as there are multiple times the number of equity funds within the ETP universe than there are commodity products.

Please find this month’s Liquidation Watch list and other related analysis here ETFG Liquidation Watch List.   Thank you for reading ETFG Perspectives.