Investors continue to seek safety away from equity ETFs as political uncertainty fails to calm, with concerns over Brexit in particular. Several US treasury and gold ETFs topped the flows table for the week commencing 2 September, according to data from ULTUMUS.
Notably, the iShares core US Treasury Bond ETF (GOVT) and the SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) received $945.9m and $760m, respectively, last week. Albeit small, in tandem with the significantly large inflows, both funds saw their performance dip with GOVT’s Net Asset Value falling 0.1% and GLDs sliding 0.6%.
The iShares US Mortgage Backed Securities UCITS ETF (IMBS) had another large influx of assets worth $292.5m having pulled in a similar figure the week before.
ETFs with exposure to the US equity market fell victim to anxious investors. The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY) and the iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (IVV) suffered outflows worth $1.3bn and $584.1m in tandem with the funds’ NAV falling 1.4%.
What do ETF outflows say about bubble fears?
The only ETFs within fixed income that received large negative net flows for the period were floating rate bond products. The WisdomTree Bloomberg Floating Rate Treasury Fund (USFR) lost $570.8m worth of assets as well as the iShares Floating Rate Bond ETF (FLOT) losing $218.8m, despite both products having a slight positive performance for the week.
