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Globe editors have posted this research report with permission of National Bank Financial. This should not be construed as an endorsement of the report's recommendations. For more on The Globe's disclaimers please read here. The following is excerpted from the report:

Canadian equity was for sale all year as can be seen from several ETFs such as XIU and ZCN with money rotating to U.S. and overseas markets through ZSP and ZDM. We also saw increased activity into U.S.-domiciled equity ETFs.

Rising rates drew bond investors away from aggregate and long-term maturities like XCB and XBB in favour of shorter-term products like ZIC and CBO, with preference toward lower credit to make up the shortfall in yield. Again investors looked to U.S.-domiciled products for more liquid high yield.

Commodity weakness made such previous product favourites such as gold bullion suffer outflows (in the U.S., this had a noticeable drag on the ETF industry as a whole)

The top ETF for the year was ZPR (BMO S&P/TSX Laddered Preferred Share Index ETF) with $944-million in new assets. ZPR met the dual investor demand for yield with greater potential to withstand rising interest rates than the wider preferred share market, which includes perpetuals.

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