Investors pushed $3.9 billion into U.S.-listed ETFs last week, bringing year-to-date inflows up to $406.1 billion. U.S. fixed income ETFs accumulated $4 billion of new money, while U.S. equity ETFs shed $3.2 billion.
Total assets under management in U.S.-listed ETFs hit $9.22 trillion thanks to the modest inflows and fresh record highs in the U.S. stock market.
The S&P 500 hovered just below 5,500 for much of last week, a gain of almost 16% for the year.
On the other hand, despite their inflows last week, prices for fixed income ETFs mostly fell as Treasury yields ticked up.
The 10-year Treasury bond yield approached 4.5% for the first time in three weeks as election odds shifted in favor of Trump over Biden.
However, just like last week, many of these flows figures are muddied by heartbeat trades designed to minimize taxes.
Those trades tend to be more common during quarterly index rebalancings, when stocks are added and subtracted from indices.
The Technology Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLK), which had outflows of $8.5 billion last week, is case in point. Its outflow is essentially a mirror image of the prior week’s inflow, and is meant to reduce the taxes associated with its shifting portfolio, including a $10 billion sale of Apple shares in exchange for Nvidia.
Following behind XLK on the weekly outflows list was the Vanguard Growth ETF (VUG), which had $6 billion of outflows—another heartbeat trade.
For a full list of last week’s top inflows and outflows, see the tables below:
Disclaimer: All data as of 6 a.m. Eastern time the date the article is published. Data is believed to be accurate; however, transient market data is often subject to subsequent revision and correction by the exchanges.
