Vanguard was the top gatherer of assets into exchange traded funds (ETFs) and exchange traded products (ETPs) in January, according to new figures from ETFGI.

The asset manager pulled in net inflows of $4.8bn, despite global assets falling 3.2% overall.

Nomura Asset Management followed Vanguard with $2.4bn of inflows, and First Trust with $1.5bn. State Street Global Advisors’ SPDR ETFs had the largest net outflows of a staggering $16.5bn, followed by iShares with $5.6bn.

Global assets had net outflows of $7.6bn which was primarily due to January being a “difficult month” for emerging and developed equity markets.

“Concerns about economic uncertainty and unrest in emerging markets, a fear that US stocks are over bought and uncertainty over the impact of Fed tapering  caused investors to take net outflows of US$7.6 billion from ETFs/ETPs in January 2014.” according to Deborah Fuhr, Managing Partner at ETFGI.

Equity ETFs/ETPs suffered the most with $11.8bn of net ouflows, followed by commodity ETFs/ETPs with $1.9bn. Fixed income ETFs/ETPs on the other hand gathered the largest net inflows with $2.9bn.