July ETF Inflows Top $44 billion

Inflows for global exchange traded products soared to $44.1 billion last month, the best month since September 2012, when inflows reached $45.1 billion. Year-to-date inflows of $143.3 billion are now ahead of last year's record of $128.3 billion, according to data from BlackRock BLK, parent company of iShares, the world's largest ETF issuer. Helped by a rebound in U.S. stocks, U.S. equity ETFs attracted $31.6 billion in cash in July, more than triple the amount that went into equity mutual funds. Following outflows of $8.4 billion in June, bond ETFs raked in $6.4 billion in July, with $2.6 billion of that total going to junk bond funds. That is good for the largest amount to high-yield bond funds since February 2012, according to BlackRock. "Flows into US Sector funds swelled to $6.2bn, the highest monthly total since 2008. Investors favored more economically sensitive sectors including Financials with $2.3bn, Technology with $1.2bn, and Energy with $0.6bn," said BlackRock. The Financial Select Sector SPDR XLF, the largest financial services ETF by assets, is the only sector fund among the top-10 asset-gathering ETFs on a year-to-date basis. Related: Regional Bank ETFs: Don't Mess With Texas. Investors continued to pull money out of ETFs backed by physical gold, such as the SPDR Gold Shares GLD and the iShares Gold Trust IAU last month. Outflows from gold ETFs were $2.6 billion in July, bringing the two-month total to $6.9 billion, according to BlackRock data. Emerging markets ETFs, which have frustrated investors for much of 2013, saw small inflows of $500 million last month after $4.3 billion in redemptions in the previous month. However, investors did pull $1.1 billion from China ETFs in July. On a year-to-date basis, the top three ETFs in terms of inflows are the SPDR S&P 500 SPY, the WisdomTree Japan Hedged Equity Fund DXJ and the iShares MSCI Japan ETF EWJ. "US and Japanese Equity exposures account for the bulk of the year-over-year Equity flow growth. Both equity markets have been bolstered by accommodative CentralBank monetary policies," said BlackRock. Other funds on the top-10 list for 2013 inflows include the iShares Russell 2000 ETF IWM, XLF, the Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF VTI and the PowerShares Senior Loan Portfolio BKLN. Nine of the top-10 ETFs in terms of year-to-date outflows are listed in the U.S. and the list is lead by GLD with 2013 outflows of nearly $19.9 billion. Other members of that list include the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF EEM, the Vanguard FTSE Emerging Markets ETF VWO, the SPDR Barclays Capital High Yield Bond JNK, the iShares MSCI Brazil Capped ETF EWZ and the iShares J.P. Morgan USD Emerging Markets Bond ETF EMB, according to BlackRock. For more on ETFs, click here.