Weekly roundup: Russell expands ETF suite; Flow Traders Asia launches ETF trading desk

The ETFM roundup brings you some of this week's ETF news.

Russell Investments has expanded its suite of investment disciplines ETFs with the addition of four small cap funds.

The ETFs, which are listed on Nasdaq, are the Russell Small Cap Aggressive Growth ETF, Russell Small Cap Consistent Growth ETF, Russell Small Cap Low P/E ETF and Russell Small Cap Contrarian ETF.

Russell, which has traditionally been known for its indices, launched its ETF business earlier this year. It now has more than 20 ETFs providing exposure to investment discipline and factor-based underlyings.

Flow Traders Asia has set up an ETF trading desk to meet increased demand from institutional investors for access to ETFs. The specialised sales trading team will provide professional investors such as hedge funds, private banks and sovereign wealth funds with two-way OTC bid-ask prices and liquidity for more than 95% of ETFs listed in Asia, Europe and the US.

The Six Swiss Exchange reports a fall in turnover on ETFs listed on the exchange in September. Turnover during the month was CHF12.3bn (€9.94bn), a fall of 10.4% compared to August. The total number of trades fell 15.7% to 106,164.

All instruments traded on the exchange experienced a decline in turnover, with the exception of international bonds, which had a 43.3% increase.

ProShares has listed leveraged and short natural gas ETFs. The ProShares Ultra DJ-UBS Natural Gas and ProShares UltraShort DJ-UBS Natural Gas both listed on the New York Stock Exchange this week. They are designed to deliver twice the daily performanceor twice the decline of the Dow Jones-UBS Natural Gas Subindex, respectively.

In addition, it has listed leveraged and inverse volatility ETFs. The ProShares Ultra VIX Short-Term Futures ETF seeks to provide twice the daily performance of the S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures Index.

The ProShares Short VIX Short-Term Futures ETF aims to provide the inverse daily performance of the S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures Index.