ETFs Just Set a Trading Volume Record

ETF share of total market volume recently hit an all-time high of 27.6%, according to IEX. That is a significant jump from where things sat for years, when ETF volume hovered in the high teens to low 20s as a percentage of the tape.


Source: IEX

Interestingly, what’s driving the record is not the giant buy-and-hold funds like the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO). IEX points to leveraged ETFs as a major driver of the increase. By its numbers, leveraged products account for roughly 40% of total ETF trading volume, and seven of the ten most actively traded ETFs carry leverage.

What makes that astonishing is the fact that leveraged ETFs are a rounding error on the asset side. They hold around $175 billion, barely 1% of the $15.6 trillion sitting in U.S. ETFs. In other words, a sliver of the industry by assets is responsible for something like 40% of the trading.

It’s worth noting, though, that IEX appears to be counting shares traded, and leveraged funds tend to trade at low prices with heavy turnover, so they loom especially large on a share-count basis. 

Using dollar value, it looks less lopsided. On Monday, leveraged and inverse funds made up roughly 16% of the traded value across the hundred most active ETFs, and two of the top ten—the Direxion Daily Semiconductor Bull 3X Shares (SOXL) and the Direxion Daily Semiconductor Bear 3X Shares (SOXS)—were leveraged.

Of course, that is still a striking amount. SOXL was the third most active fund in the entire market by dollar value, at about $7.8 billion, and SOXS ranked ninth at roughly $2.9 billion. 

Both moved more money than VOO, the largest fund on the planet by assets, which traded about $2.7 billion. Only the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY) and the Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ), each around $19 billion, were more active than SOXL. 

Whichever way you slice it, leveraged ETFs are punching well above their weight. 

IEX flags a second force behind the trend too. There are simply a lot more ETFs now. In 2025, the number of U.S.-listed ETFs passed the number of U.S.-listed companies for the first time.

To be sure, more listings on their own do not move the needle. If nobody trades the funds, it doesn’t matter that there’s more of them. 

But clearly people are increasingly trading them. Many investors who once would have traded single stocks to express a view are now reaching for ETFs to do it instead. The explosion of leveraged single-stock ETFs, which give traders a way to make amplified bets without touching margin, has poured fuel on that fire.