The Online Trading Show in Piazza Affari, once again a great success with over 3.500 accredited professionals, becomes a good opportunity to celebrate 10 years since the listing of the first ETFs on the Italian market, which took place in the 2002.
Ten years of life, therefore, in which they grew from 81 contracts in the first year to 11.400 in 2012, yet Exchange Traded Funds (this is the acronym), which went from 2% market share in 2007 to 11% in 2011, are not yet fully known to most.
In reality it is a very simple instrument, and of absolute transparency (subject to widespread regulation both by the EU and by the body that brings together the European Consob): juridically, it is a matter of normal open-ended investment funds, traded on the Stock Exchange like shares and whose dividends can be distributed or reinvested, but which they do nothing but replicate a market index, broad or narrow.
The passive management of this index, which can be the Ftse Mib, like only the Blue Chips, like a geographical index or even like a raw material (in which case we speak more properly of ETC, Exchange Traded Commodities), therefore consists in keeping in the portfolio all the components of the index that is replicated (in the case of the Ftse-Mib, the average of 40 realities): the ideal way, therefore, to diversify investments.
And in fact the instrument is liked and growing: according to the data processed by Borsa Italiana on the occasion of the tenth anniversary, the assets of ETFs in Italy updated to August 2012 is almost 18 billion euro, compared to 500 million in 2003. Not only that: at the beginning, in 2002, there were only 8 ETFs, 4 issuers, and 81 contracts for a value of 3,3 million euro; a decade later, however, the reality speaks of 11 issuers, 798 instruments (614 ETFs, 172 ETCs and 12 ETNs), 11.400 contracts and 242,8 million euros.
Particularly relevant, also compared to the other European markets, is the presence of retail investors, also highlighted by the average size of contracts which in 2012 amounted to approximately 21.300 euros. The results can only have satisfied the management of Borsa Italiana, who through Pietro Poletto, Head of the ETFplus Market, commented: “The Italian ETF market ranks among the first in Europe. The great success achieved by this tool in Italy is rooted in its simplicity and flexibility of use, as well as in the possibility of trading in real time through the Borsa Italiana platform".
“The ETFplus market – Poletto continued – is not only the technological but also the regulatory context in which transparency and saver education are the primary objectives of all our actions. The positive response we have had from investors, issuers and intermediaries, with whom we have worked closely, testifies to the validity of the choices that Borsa Italiana has made to enhance and grow the market over the past ten years".
