ETF watch: Investors seek safe havens and commodities while ESG demand dips

The behaviour of exchange traded fund (ETF) investors often tends to reflect what’s happening in both the active management space and wider markets. But that's not totally the case so far in 2022, with figures from the opening three months of the year pointing to some surprising nuances in investor behaviour.

With the sheer extent of inflation becoming difficult to ignore, investors in ETFs and other funds have made some fairly intuitive moves in recent months, with appetite for quality growth funds and fixed-income allocations appearing to tail off somewhat. But this has not resulted in outright selling of ETFs: some investors are continuing to favour even those subsectors that look increasingly under pressure.