This article first appeared on GuruFocus.
ETFs now hold a large and growing share of the U.S. stock market, so what they buy and sell moves real money. Yet that activity is spread across hundreds of funds and thousands of daily holdings files, and it is hard to see in one place.
The new page, What ETFs Are Buying and Selling, pulls it together. It shows which stocks ETFs are net buying and net selling, where ETF money is going by sector, and which names are the most actively traded and most widely held across funds. One chart from the page, Top Stocks by ETF Flow, now also appears on the GuruFocus homepage.
What the page shows
A period selector at the top (1W, 2W, 1M or 3M) sets the window for every section below it, so you can compare a week of activity with a quarter.
Top 10 Stocks by Net ETF Flow. Two ranked lists side by side. Net Buy shows the stocks with the largest net ETF inflow over the period, and Net Sell shows the largest net outflow. Below them, daily charts plot the net ETF flow into the top names day by day against their share prices, so you can see whether fund buying arrived before, during or after a price move.
Over the two weeks, ETF buying went mostly to the largest U.S. stocks, with Apple, Exxon Mobil and Nvidia each drawing more than $3 billion. Net selling was far smaller and led by Taiwan Semiconductor at $216 million.
Sector Rankings. Where ETF money went by sector, measured two ways. Net Dollar Flow is dollars bought minus dollars sold. Net Buyers is the number of ETFs that bought minus the number that sold, with each fund counted once however many days it traded. Together they show whether a sector’s flow came from many funds or a few large ones.
Sector Flow Over Time. Daily net ETF flow for each sector, each plotted against the S&P 500, to show rotations into and out of sectors as the market moves.
Every sector drew net ETF buying over the two weeks, but most of it came on one day. Oct. 2 brought about $70 billion, roughly two-thirds of the $102 billion total.
Latest Hot Picks. A sortable, downloadable table of the stocks ETFs are most active in, with the ratio of buys to sells, the number of ETF owners, price, market cap, P/E and dividend yield.
Top 10 Most Actively Traded Stocks by ETFs. The stocks the largest number of ETFs traded over the period.
Top 10 Most Widely Held Stocks by ETFs. The stocks held by the largest number of ETFs, a view of what sits at the core of the fund universe.