Day: July 15, 2024
BlackRock reached its highest value of assets under management (AUM) just six months after the explosive launch of its iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) in January.
As of June 30, the financial giant held $10.65 trillion across its entire platform, up 13% year over year, according to its Q2 earnings report published on Monday. That’s well above its $10.2 trillion estimate for the second quarter, during which it hauled $51 billion in new client cash to its long term investment funds.
“Organic growth was driven by private markets, retail active fixed income, and surging flows into our ETFs, which had their best start to a year on record,” said BlackRock CEO Larry Fink in a statement, per Bloomberg. The firm’s total net flows in Q2 totaled $82 billion, making for $139 billion in net flows for the first half of the year.
The performance surge represents a rebound for BlackRock and other money managers whose stocks and other assets plummeted in value as the Federal Reserve hiked interest rates in 2022 and 2023.
Now, with markets predicting that interest rates will start falling again in September, investors are moving capital back into fixed-income, and away from money-market funds where they won’t earn the same yield once rates drop.
That’s also potentially good news for Bitcoin (BTC)—an asset whose price is historically reacted to monetary policy changes much like stocks.
BlackRock’s IBIT
After launching IBIT at the start of the year, BlackRock has become the owner of the largest Bitcoin spot ETF in the world, which holds $18.3 billion worth of Bitcoin in its coffers as of Friday. At the end of Q1, IBIT’s flows totaled $13.9 billion, implying that net flows to the fund have climbed $4.4 billion—despite Bitcoin’s price declining significantly since that time.
Vanguard Group—BlackRock’s largest competitor—held $8.6 trillion in assets under management as of December 31, 2023, according to its website.
Unlike BlackRock, Fidelity, and other major asset managers, Vanguard chose not to launch or provide investors a platform for any Bitcoin spot ETFs for philosophical reasons.
As of last week, Vanguard’s new CEO Salim Ramij began spearheading the company—after previously helping BlackRock launch its Bitcoin ETF.
Edited by Stephen Graves
Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed by the author are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice.
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Ukrainian president says he is planning event for November in what could be first direct talks between two sides since early weeks of war. What we know on day 874
Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday that Russia should be represented at a second peace summit in November, after a first summit convened by the Ukrainian president last month in Switzerland to which Moscow was not invited. Both sides have shunned direct peace talks since negotiations between Russian and Ukraine delegations fell through in the early weeks of Russia’s invasion in February 2022. But during a press conference in Kyiv after his visit to the US for a Nato defence alliance summit, Zelenskiy opened the door to direct talks with officials from Moscow. “I believe that Russian representatives should be at the second summit,” Zelensky said, describing preparations for a follow-up gathering of Ukraine’s allies.
In the same news conference, Zelenskiy said Ukraine needs 25 Patriot air defence systems to fully defend its airspace, adding that he also wants western partners to send more F-16 warplanes than those already pledged. A six-month delay in military assistance from the US, the biggest single contributor to Ukraine, meant that Kyiv’s forces had “lost the initiative” on the frontline, Zelenskiy said.
Top EU officials will boycott informal meetings hosted by Hungary while the country has the EU’s rotating presidency, after Hungary’s pro-Russian prime minister Viktor Orbán held a series of rogue meetings with foreign leaders about Ukraine that angered European partners. The highly unusual decision to have the European Commission president and other top officials of the body boycott the meetings was made “in light of recent developments marking the start of the Hungarian [EU] presidency”, commission spokesperson Eric Mamer posted on Monday on X.
US journalist and author Masha Gessen was convicted in absentia on Monday by a Moscow court on charges of spreading false information about the military and was sentenced to eight years in prison. The Moscow-born Gessen, a staff writer for The New Yorker and a columnist for The New York Times who lives in the US, is a prominent critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin and an award-winning writer.
A Ukraine drone attack sparked a fire at a factory producing electrical devices and components in Russia’s Kursk region, the interim governor of the region bordering Ukraine said early Tuesday. “None of the workers were injured,” Alexei Smirnov, the governor, said on the Telegram messaging app.
A Russian military court on Monday granted house arrest to a general and former commander in Moscow’s Ukraine offensive who has been charged with fraud. Major-General Ivan Popov was released from behind bars Monday after being arrested in May on suspicion of large-scale fraud, punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
Ukraine said Monday that a military serviceman allegedly attempting to flee the country illegally had been shot dead by a border guard after being caught and detained. The State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) said four servicemen were apprehended while approaching the Moldovan border by foot in the southern Ukrainian region of Odesa on Sunday. “While trying to cross the border, border guards noticed them and detained them,” the SBI said. “One of the fugitives attacked the border guard while trying to escape. In response, he used his service weapon and shot the attacker.”