Against a backdrop of geopolitical uncertainty, April’s total traded volume on the Tradeweb European-listed ETF marketplace was just shy of €13.8 billion. While the figure is down from the record €17.7bn seen during March 2017, the figure is still above the average recorded through 2016.

Adriano Pace, managing director, equity derivatives at Tradeweb.

Adriano Pace, managing director of equity derivatives at Tradeweb, said: “The platform has maintained momentum following the surge in activity around the US election last November, both in terms of traded notional and key metrics, such as quote and hit rates.”

Overall, equity and fixed income ETFs saw net selling in April in contrast to their commodity-based counterparts. Monthly activity in the latter mirrored the 12-month rolling average at 7% of the entire platform flow.

Equity Europe was once again the most heavily-traded ETF category with nearly €3.1 billion in notional volume. Ranked third, government bond ETFs proved to be the most actively traded fixed income segment with more than €1.4 billion executed over the course of the month.

Source: Tradeweb.

Top ten ETFs by traded volume

A commodity-based product featured among the ten most actively traded ETFs for the first time since November 2016. In fourth place, the Source Physical Gold P ETC Certs ETC (LON: SGLD) aims to replicate as closely as possible the performance of the London Gold Market Fixing Ltd PM Fix Price/USD. However, April’s top ETF by traded volume was the db X-trackers Euro Stoxx 50 UCITS ETF (Xetra: XESC) which tracks a blue-chip index comprising the stocks of 50 market sector leading eurozone companies.

Source: Tradeweb.