Wall Street stocks may now technically be in a bull market, but exchange traded fund investors appear to be largely resisting the siren call to jump on board the rally.
Net inflows to US equity ETFs did tick up to $22.1bn in May, their highest level this year, according to data from BlackRock. However — technology stocks aside — there seemed to be greater enthusiasm for more idiosyncratic assets such as Japanese equities and gold.
“The overarching theme is that flows did pick up in US equity, but still nowhere near the peak of flows we have seen in the past,” said Karim Chedid, head of investment strategy for BlackRock’s iShares arm in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.