For all the noise and euphoria surrounding the take-off of equity-based ETFs, they are fast becoming old news: the excitement now is beginning to shift to their newly arrived fixed income brethren.

In late July this year, just as most bankers and investors were winding down for the summer, Barclays Global Investors launched the first four fixed-income funds on the American Stock Exchange. Despite the unhappy timing of the launch, they hit the ground running and within just the first two weeks of trading, the four had attracted $3.2bn (E3.3bn) in assets and were seeing average daily trading volume of 440,180 shares.