The market for ETFs and exchange traded funds continues to scale fresh heights in terms of assets.

Assets invested in exchange traded funds and products listed globally reached a record high of $3.143 trillion at the end of May, according to preliminary data from ETFGI, a firm tracking developments in these investment vehicles.

Record levels of assets invested in ETFs/ETPs listed in the US were also reached at the end of May, at $2.229 trillion, and in Japan, at $147 billion.

At the end of May 2016, the global ETF/ETP industry had 6,374 ETFs/ETPs, with 12,200 listings, from 280 providers listed on 65 exchanges in 53 countries, the report said.

ETFs are typically open-ended, index-based funds. They can be bought and sold like ordinary shares on a stock exchange and offer broad exposure across developed, emerging and frontier markets, equities, fixed income and commodities. Exchange traded products are similar to ETFs in how they trade and settle but do not use an open-end fund structure. 

In May, ETFs/ETPs gathered net inflows of $10.60 billion. Fixed income ETFs/ETPs gathered the largest net inflows with $7.47 billion, followed by commodity ETFs/ETPs with $5.47 billion. Equity ETFs/ETPs experienced net outflows of $4.53 billion.