On The Fly: ETF fund flow highlights

For the past week, there was an atypical situation in terms of flows with a nearly even split between redemptions and creations among the top-twenty ETFs. On the redemptions side, over 61% of outflows were from just two funds which were the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) and the iShares Russell 2000 ETF (RUT). The remainder of redemptions were dominated by bond funds of various types without much of a skew. On the creations side, the Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ) was the single-largest inflow. There was however and unusual close second in the JPMorgan BetaBuilders Japan ETF (BBJP). In line with the dominance of banks and other firms reporting this week, the Financials (XLF) saw a sizable inflow along with the Industrials (XLI). The total flow of over $11.5B among the top twenty funds was relatively light compared to prior weeks, which is not out of line with early earnings season patterns.