The Vienna Stock Exchange announced that it is further expanding its range of offerings for domestic investors with the new “ETF segment” launching today.
Passive investment funds offer investors a simple, effective and inexpensive way of investing in the most diverse markets and regions. ETFs track stock indices as precisely as possible – one of the reasons why they are called exchange-traded index funds. Investors now have access to a range of 60 ETFs on the Vienna Stock Exchange focusing on Europe and the US, including all available ETFs on the Austrian leading index, the ATX.
Global demand for the 60 exchange-traded passive funds created by nine different providers has been increasing, thanks to their inexpensive cost structure and transparency. All 60 ETFs can be traded from 9.00 a.m. to 5.30 p.m. in continuous trading. Lang & Schwarz act as market makers and guarantee competitive prices and constant price discovery by permanently entering binding quotes.
We promised our domestic investors to bring the world to Austria. With today’s launch we are tapping into the growing ETF trend to help them diversify their international investment options for their portfolios,” stated Christoph Boschan, CEO of Wiener Börse AG. “Our mission is to enable investors to ‘Invest global, buy local’, by systematically bringing new investment possibilities to Austria’s home market. Trading in international stocks in the new segment ‘global market’ has been doing very well. We are planning to further expand the range of investment offers by the end of the year and add new securities to the quotation list.
Starting in 2018, the Vienna Stock Exchange plans to add ETFs from new geographical regions and sectors.
Global ETF trend
The ETF market in Europe has been growing strongly for years now. Funds with assets under management (AuM) and also the number of available products have risen to new record highs since 2017 according to BlackRock and Bloomberg. The selection of ETFs available on the trading platform of the Vienna Stock Exchange reflects the most popular products among Austrian investors. The 60 ETFs available for trading manage a volume of assets of EUR 158 billion; these include iShares, db x-trackers, Vanguard, Lyxor and many more. At 25 of the 60 ETFs available for trading and a total volume of EUR 88.18 billion, the majority of the products are by iShares, a BlackRock brand. BlackRock is one of the largest independent asset managers worldwide. For example, iShares has ETFs on the ATX, Euro Stoxx 50 and S&P 500.
Bahram Sadighian, Head of the ETF business for Austria and Eastern Europe at the market leader, BlackRock, on the general benefits of ETFs and current trends:
Worldwide, private investors are taking advantage of the benefits of ETFs to build wealth, retirement provisions or for saving money. Low costs, flexibility and the liquidity of the products, but also the high degree of transparency are often the reasons for investors to use these products for their own retirement provisioning.