ETF Zoo: Is the ETF Explosion a Market Top or New Baseline?
This week's ETF Zoo breaks down the record-shattering ETF flows in 2025 and debates whether the market can sustain a $6 billion-a-day pace in 2026. The group also talks crypto, the Grift ETF filing, and overwhelming advisor bullishness going into the new year.
Welcome to ETF Zoo, where we check in on the latest happenings in the wild world of ETFs. In the first episode of ETF Zoo in the new year, we talk about the record-breaking capital flows of 2025 and make bold predictions for 2026. The conversation focuses on the "new normal" of massive daily inflows, the entry of major banking players into the crypto space, and the growing skepticism surrounding the market's continued bullish streak.
ETF.com hosts Dave Nadig, President & Director of Research, and Sumit Roy, Senior ETF Analyst, are joined this week by Eric Balchunas, Senior ETF Analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence; Cinthia Murphy, Investment Strategist at TMX VettaFi; and Todd Sohn, Senior ETF & Technical Strategist for Strategas Securities.
Highlights from the conversation include:
- "It's kind of like the perfect capper to a year which was a whole different ballgame. So, the crazier part is if you take the $230, combine it with the year, you get that $1.47 trillion. That is $6 billion a day. Just a minute ago, a billion or two a day was the normal pace." Eric Balchunas
- "As much as there are buffers and so many other options, I'll throw out that I think low-vol strategies make a comeback." Todd Sohn
- "They're bullish, they're confident, but at the same time they're like, 'You know what, we need to diversify this.' A lot of appetite for small-caps and international on the questions we asked. So it's like, 'Yeah, let's be bullish but also let's prepare for a downturn here.' So it's a kind of a really mixed story." Cinthia Murphy
- "I won't make a market call but I will say I do think that at some point this year, we're 15% down. It seems almost inevitable we're due for... We need a good solid sell , not like one of those April ones. That did not count at all. I'm talking like we need a good solid three-four weeks of pain." Dave Nadig
- "No one knows what's going to happen, obviously, but the trend is your friend and in this case, the trend is extremely, extremely from the bottom left to the top right. So yeah, I'll take $2 trillion. Total wild guess but I'll go there." Sumit Roy
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