SPY Reaches $400B In AUM

The trading doldrums of August didn’t slow down ETF flows.

U.S.-listed ETFs gained approximately $67.2 billion in net inflows during the month, according to ETF.com data provider FactSet. That’s a jump of more than $13.5 billion from June, and puts it just higher than net flows in January and May.

There’s now $6.8 trillion in assets under management in U.S.-listed ETFs as of Tuesday.

US Equities, Fixed Income Advance

U.S. equities continued to be the main driver of overall flows across the industry, adding $20.85 billion in net flows month-over-month.

ETFs tracking broad indices and mega cap companies led the way, with the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY) pulling in $5.1 billion, followed by a combined $11.8 billion between the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO), the Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI) and the Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ).

The KraneShares CSI China Internet ETF (KWEB) rounded out the top 10 gainers for the month, with $1.4 billion in inflows. The activity in that fund appears to be driven by dip-buyers looking to snap up exposure to the industry despite Beijing’s ongoing crackdown on big technology firms within its borders.

Domestic fixed income product inflows gained by 33% to $16.8 billion in the two periods, led by a $2.5 billion inflow into the iShares iBoxx USD Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF (LQD) and $1.7 billion into the iShares TIPS Bond ETF (TIP). Despite the inflows in August, LQD has lost the most assets in 2021, with outflows of $11.3 billion year-to-date.

Gold, Dividend Plays Fall

The SPDR Gold Trust (GLD) was by far the largest loser in the month, posting outflows of $1.7 billion for the month and a loss of 3% of its AUM. Investors have pulled almost $9.5 billion in assets out of the fund so far this year.

ETFs providing exposure to dividend-paying large cap companies also suffered in the month. The SPDR S&P Dividend ETF (SDY) was the second largest loser, with $941 million in outflows, while the Invesco S&P 500 High Dividend Low Volatility ETF (SPHD) lost $496.4 million.

SPY Reaches Milestone

SPY crossed the $400 billion mark at the very end of the month. It’s an astronomical number in ETF terms, but a look at the history of the first exchange-traded fund on the U.S. markets puts its acceleration in accumulating assets into focus.

Consider the following:

It took approximately 7,060 days for SPY to hold $100 billion in assets at the end of a month, when it closed with $106.5 billion at the close of March 2012. It nearly broke that mark in December 2007 and 2008.

Investors then brought SPY’s assets from $100 billion to $200 billion in just over 920 days, crossing the mark sometime in December 2014.

The gap between $200 billion and $300 billion in assets spanned about 1,150 days after investors sold off in the first half of 2015. SPY hit the month-end mark at the end of January 2018 with $306.5 billion in assets. Approximately 975 days have passed between when the $300 billion mark was broken in late 2018 and today.

But the bull parade that has been U.S. equities through much of the pandemic was what propelled SPY to its new watermark. SPY hit its pandemic low of $224.9 billion at the end of last March. It took approximately 520 days for it to gain $175 billion in assets.

Ben Johnson, director of global ETF research at Morningstar, said the milestone is interesting in the broader context of how the nearly $7 trillion U.S. ETF market has developed over the past several decades.

However, he cautioned that SPY’s rise in assets was aided by forces other than organic growth.

“I would argue that the first $100 billion was the most noteworthy and the hardest-fought $100 billion, and the next $300 billion that has been added since were built on momentum, built on relatively bigger bases, and got a huge amount of help from just the market at large,” he said.

For a full list of this month’s top inflows and outflows, see the tables below:

Top Gainers (August 2021)

Top Gainers (Year-to-Date)

Biggest Losers (August 2021)

Biggest Losers (Year-to-Date)

Asset Classes (August 2021)

Asset Classes (Year-to-Date)

August 2021 ETF Issuer League Table

Disclaimer: All data as of 6 a.m. Eastern time the date the article is published. Data is believed to be accurate; however, transient market data is often subject to subsequent revision and correction by the exchanges.