Last week, on a breakout week in terms of technical performance in the S&P 500 Index, we interestingly saw larger net outflows in SPDR S&P 500 (NYSEArca: SPY), totaling more than $1.1 billion.
A lesser known, but still prominent ETF that tracks the same S&P 500 Index, iShares S&P 500 (NYSEArca: IVV), took in net assets of more than $500 million via creation activity last week given this same market action and we find the flows notable.
This is similar to the phenomenon that we pointed out on several occasions earlier this year where it seems that assets have been transitioning from certain situations, away from the larger, more established SPY, and into smaller S&P
500 Index tracking funds — previously, we saw such activity with Vanguard S&P 500 (NYSEArca: VOO).
From a live performance standpoint, since IVV’s inception in May of 2000, the fund has substantially outperformed SPY, down 5.29% whereas SPY is down 5.87% (both funds charge the same expense ratio of 9 basis points).
While SPY averages 161 million shares per day traded and is the most popular fund in the ETF space in terms of assets under management ($94 billion in AUM) while IVV has north of $28 billion currently.