Susan Dziubinski: Hi, I'm Susan Dziubinski with Morningstar. Funds that invest in particular themes, ranging from artificial intelligence to cannabis, have flooded the market. Are these funds merely gimmicks, or can they be useful tools in an investor's kit? Joining me today to provide us an overview of some new Morningstar research about thematic funds is Ben Johnson. Ben is Morningstar's director of global ETF research. Ben, thanks for being here today. Ben Johnson: Thanks for having me, Susan. Dziubinski: Ben, how has the number of thematic funds and investor interest in them grown over time? Johnson: We've seen dramatic growth in thematic funds over the course of the past few years. In fact, if you look back over the three years through the end of March 2021, assets under management worldwide in thematic funds tripled to nearly $554 billion. That represented 2.1% of all of investors' assets that are invested in managed investment funds worldwide. That's up from 0.6% if you were to go back 10 years. What we've seen at the same time is that the menu of these funds has also grown. Just last year, we saw a record 237 new thematic funds launched globally. That's up from 167 in 2019. And if you look back to the end of March of 2021, worldwide there were 1,159 thematic funds available to investors around the world.