2020 Was a Record Year for ETF Records

Global stock markets put an exclamation point at the end of a remarkable year in December. The Morningstar Global Markets Index--a broad gauge of global equities--gained 4.86% during the month and ended the year 16.07% higher than where it began. After favoring bond exchange-traded funds for most of the year, investors jumped on the equity ETF bandwagon in the final two months of 2020. While the $44.8 billion that investors allocated to stock ETFs in December was sharply lower than November’s record $81.8 billion, it marked the sixth-largest monthly inflow ever into this group. When the books closed on 2020, ETFs had taken in a record $499 billion in net flows and held just under $5.5 trillion of investors’ money.