April ETF Stats Part II

The exchange traded products business was busy attracting fresh inflows once again in April with the more than 1,200 U.S.-listed ETFs and ETNs attracting more than $22 billion in fresh investments for the month. Data from the National Stock Exchange show commodities funds garnered $775 million in new investments, but $480 million of that went to inverse funds, perhaps indicating investors have become pensive about the rapid ascent of many commodities prior to April. The number of ETFs with more than $100 million in assets under management jumped to 523 from 513 last month while the number of ETNs surpassing $100 million in AUM rose to 27 in April from 23 in March. After setting the world on fire through the early part of the year, energy ETFs were home to substantial outflows. The US Oil Fund USO lost $683 million in investments while the Energy Select Sector SPDR XLE saw $671 million in outflows and the SPDR S&P Oil & Gas Exploration & Production ETF XOP saw withdrawals of $310 million, according to ETFdb.com. BlackRock BLK, parent company of iShares, State Street's STT SSgA unit and Vanguard, the three largest, U.S. ETF issuers, all added to their AUM hauls, as did most ETF issuers. Among the ETF issuers that saw their AUM fall in April from March were Pimco, Direxion, HOLDRs and US Commodity Funds. Pimco's decline was especially precipitous at almost 10% from the firm's March ETF AUM figure, according to NSX data. The five largest ETFs are the SPDR S&P 500 SPY with $95.3 billion in AUM, the SPDR Gold Shares GLD with $60.6 billion in AUM, the Vanguard Emerging Markets Stock ETF VWO with $49.3 billion in AUM, the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Index Fund EEM with $41.7 billion in AUM and the iShares MSCI EAFE Index Fund EFA with $41.4 billion in AUM.