Record demand for fixed income ETPs helped the industry reach its best ever January, according to iShares’ parent company BlackRock.

Fixed income products attracted US$9.1 billion in net new assets, making up close to 30 percent of the US$34.1 billion pulled in by the sector as a whole, an “uncharacteristically” high proportion and a monthly record, according to BlackRock’s January ETP Landscape Report.

In particular, investment grade bond and high yield ETPs were the flavours of the month with investors, gathering US$7 billion of net inflows between them.

“The US$7.0bn gathered by investment grade and high yield corporate bond products represents a fourfold increase over the average month flows in 2011 of US$1.7bn for these ETP asset categories,” said the report.

January inflows were up 116 percent on December 2011 and 144 percent on January 2011. The ETP industry now has a total of US$1.651 trillion in assets under management, said BlackRock.

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