On The Fly: ETF fund flow highlights

Risk aversion dominated in the past week. Even accounting for lighter holiday trading, flows were very moderate compared to recent weeks. The skew was decidedly to redemptions according to data for the top ten creations and redemptions from ETF.com. On the inflows side, there was far less of a scale difference than in prior weeks. For the first time in recent memory, the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD) topped fund inflows. That is perhaps not surprising in terms of the more volatile geopolitical environment of the last two weeks. Real Estate (IYR) and the Utilities (XLU), two more risk averse yield proxies were also in the top ten creations though in moderate size. On the redemptions side, the SPDR S&P 500 Trust (SPY) topped the list at more than half of all total outflow. The remainder of redemptions were very small in scale by comparison at nine times smaller than the SPDR S&P 500 Trust, or more.