SPDR S&P Retail (NYSEArca: XRT) has been trading on well-above-average volume lately amid a breakout to all-time price levels.
Interestingly, XRT has attracted almost $600 million in recent inflows, which accounts for a massive amount of the assets under management in the fund, about $922 million.
The retail sector ETF, which has an expense ratio of 0.35%, has been extremely active recently, in terms of both an acceleration in trading volume as well as related options activity.
Trading volume has been off the chart in recent sessions, as the fund had one session where nearly 15 million shares changed hands alone (average daily volume is about 4.4 million shares). [Retail Sales Lift Sector ETF to High on Heavy Volume]
Not everyone is bullish about the near term prospects of the ETF as we have also witnessed protective put spread buying in XRT in mostly March options.
It is very possible that the options activity could be a holder of the underlying ETF if not long individual retail based equities.