On The Fly: ETF fund flow highlights

For the week creations bested redemptions by a factor of 1.45 to 1, per data from ETF.com. That flow factor conceals an important offset. For example on the creations side, $1.4B poured into the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) but over -$1.27B came out of the iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (IVV). Those offsets continued at smaller scale with Health Care (XLV) and Technology (XLK) seeing inflows and the Financials (XLF) and Utilities (XLU) seeing redemptions. When we remove S&P 500 index and sector funds from consideration, the bulk of activity was in bonds or interest rate products. The offsets in that context primarily had to do with duration, with money coming out of long-term treasurys such as the iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (TLT) and flowing into the iShares 1-3 Year Treasury Bond ETF (SHY). To some degree the week was zero sum as a result of these pair-offs.