S&P and Gold Top ETF Flows for the Week

For the period from Friday, August 17th through Thursday August 23rd both the S&P 500 ETF (AMEX:SPY) and Gold ETF (AMEX:GLD) saw the biggest flow of funds into them.  SPY saw $2.3 billion flow in over those five trading days, or a 2.1% increase in AUM.  SPY made a high for the year on Tuesday August 21st, and the next day more than $2.5 billion flowed into the fund, according to IndexUniverse.com.  Since the market turned on July 23rd, however, SPY had lost nearly 6% of its AUM ($6.8 billion) and only that August 21st close brought any buying into the fund.  So, as the broader market was making new highs money was pouring out of it, which suggests the low-volume melt up we’ve been seeing for the past four or five weeks has very little conviction behind it.

GLD saw more than $1.2 billion in AUM added over the same period and has seen the second largest flow of funds out of all the ETFs since the July 23rd bottom of the Euro (AMEX:FXE) and U.S./Japanese Treasury Yields.   GLD has seen $1.67 billion in new money added to the the fund even though the price has moved up nearly $8 or 5.7%.

The fund which has seen slightly more money than GLD has been Vanguard MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (AMEX:VWO), $1.76 billion or 3.5% of AUM.  If there was ever a moment when the ETF market was trying to tell us something about capital flows, I think this would be it.

All calls of Gold going to $1200 are literally moronic.