In recent sessions into the surge in equities around the 4th of July market holiday, we have seen sizable outflows in generally lightly traded First Trust Materials AlphaDEX (NYSEArca: FXZ).
More than $125 million has vacated the fund, which is equivalent to about 28% of the assets outstanding in the ETF at the time.
Additionally, with the ETF averaging about 188,000 shares traded daily on average, FXZ has seen a spike in trading volume, including a 2 million share plus day on this Monday as well as a 650,000 share day on Tuesday of this week.
FXZ is managed in accordance to the First Trust proprietary AlphaDEX methodology, which ranks sector equities according to fundamental and quantitative metrics, and ends up owning a subset of the S&P Basic Materials sector.
Year to date, the First Trust AlphaDEX approach has performed reasonably well compared to sector peers in the space, some of which use a market cap weighted index approach, whereas others utilize equal weighted approach or a variation on the AlphaDEX quantitative/fundamental methodology.
The best performer in the Basic Materials (U.S.) group this year is PYZ (PowerShares Dynamic Basic Materials) which has rallied 12.92%, followed by FXZ which is up 9.23%. Other alternatives in this sector space have lagged these two fundamental/quantitative approaches, as year to date performance is listed as follows: VAW (Vanguard Basic Materials, +7.80%), FBM (FocusShares Morningstar Basic Materials, +6.37%), RTM (Guggenheim S&P 500 Equal Weighted Basic Materials, +5.82%), and IYM (iShares DJ Basic Materials, +2.16%).
It is possible that the recent redemption activity in FXZ is reflective of profit taking into the recent rally, or it could also be rotation among institutional investors into another equity sector or sectors. Currently, top weighted holdings in FXZ are as follows: TKR (3.36%), ROC (3.20%), VAL (3.20%), CF (3.19%), and VMI (3.18%).
First Trust Materials AlphaDEX (NYSEArca: FXZ).
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