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Despite the European holiday season, August flows held up at $57bn, just $3bn short of July’s record, taking the year-to-date total to $380bn. Assets rose to $3.98tn, up 22.4% on the year. Two moves stood out beneath the headline: a sharp bid for precious metals, and a retreat from fixed income as bond yields climbed. Equity took about $41bn, or 62% of the total, roughly in line with its share of assets, though within equity the stronger demand came from smart-beta, small caps and thematics. Twenty new products listed in August, taking the year-to-date count to 385.
Gold drove a record month for hard assets
The standout was commodity ETCs, which gathered $7.5bn, almost entirely precious metals. Gold did the work, taking $7.4bn of inflows, the highest monthly total for gold ETCs on record. That is a change in tone after a difficult start to the year, when gold and silver both saw steep outflows following the late-January sell-off. Silver has not recovered and sits flat year-to-date. Bitcoin ETPs added $0.4bn, small next to gold but part of the same theme, and have grown steadily through the year despite the segment’s underperformance. The common thread is the debasement trade, which returned to investors’ agenda in August.
Fixed income retreated as yields rose
Fixed income went the other way, with flows down almost $5bn from July’s $13.6bn to the second-lowest monthly total of the year. Bond yields rose across major markets through August, and demand softened alongside them. After July’s broad return across segments, August was a clear step back.
What it signals
The two moves to watch are gold’s record month and the stronger demand for smart-beta, small caps and thematics within equity. Both point to growing appetite for diversifiers and hard assets, though layered on top of still-strong core demand: market beta took $22.8bn of inflows in August, so this was money added, not concentrated positions sold. That the gold record and the smart-beta bid came in a quiet holiday month, with headline flows near July’s record, points to conviction, not seasonal drift. Trading volumes fell to their lowest of the year at $375bn, a holiday calendar effect, with RFQ leading the broad decline at -30% month on month.
The figures here are drawn from ETFBOOK’s European ETP flow, AUM and trading data, which tracks daily net flows and volumes across the European ETP universe, segmented by asset class, sector and segment. The full August 2026 European ETP Market Landscape, prepared by Davide Guberti, Head of Data Analytics, breaks the segment detail down by exhibit.
