If volatility wasn’t the big theme of the last week already, here comes the ETF Issuer League to underline it. While AUM news week to week tends to focus on the biggest firms and names, this week’s standout number came for Barclays Capital and its $1.8 billion AUM ETF suite. The firm’s ETFs added $132 million total over the last week, a 7% jump in AUM. That was the largest percentage spike in AUM for issuers larger than $1 billion, and much of it can be attributed to the VIX.
See more: Of VIX and Return: Volatility ETFs Led Last Week
The VIX, or the Chicago Board Options Exchange’s CBOE Volatility Index, is a popular measure of volatility in the markets, and the focus of Barclays’ ETF with the largest inflows for the last week, the iPath Series B S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures ETN (VXX ).
VXX didn’t just lead among Barclay’s iPath ETFs – it blew them away, with its $135 million in net inflows trailed by just $3.5 million for the iPath Series B Bloomberg Natural Gas Subindex Total Return ETN (GAZ ). That, and the up and down nature of VXX suggest that those gains may or may not stick – but for this week, iPath delivered the largest percentage jump across ETF issuers of size according to VettaFi.
Among the larger ETF issuers, the biggest gainers over the last week were ProShares with $802 million in net inflows for its suite, and Dimensional Fund Advisors DFA with $820 million.
ProShares can thank the success of its “ultra” ETFs in gaining flows, with the duo of the ProShares Ultra S&P 500 ETF (SSO ) and the ProShares UltraPro Short QQQ ETF (SQQQ ) adding $471 million and $413 million respectively. The ultra strategies also including the ProShares Ultra VIX Short-Term Futures ETF (UVXY ) with $145 million, took the top six spots for inflows over the last week at ProShares.
While ProShares’ inflows were larger for its biggest gainers than for DFA’s largest inflow-getting funds, ProShares’ gains were offset by outflows from some of its other ultra and shorting ETFs. DFA’s largest gainers were the Dimensional U.S. Marketwide Value ETF (DFUV ) at $148 million and the Dimensional U.S. High Profitability ETF (DUHP ) at $106 million for the actively managed pair.
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