U.S. Small Cap Equities are once again in focus as we have mentioned in recent sessions, with the largest ETF in the category IWM (iShares Russell 2000, Expense Ratio 0.20%) leading all ETPs in terms of net inflows lately, with roughly $2 billion entering the fund via creations.
Interestingly, IWM which has been out-performing the large cap proxy S&P 500 Index notably year to date but actually lagging it in the trailing one year period, is seeing heavy selling pressure again this morning, blitzing its 50 day MA, a level it has seen some support off of lately.
It will be interesting to see if this weakness holds, do recent buyers of the ETF bail or stand pat? IWM has quite an edge over other U.S. Small Cap ETFs in terms of asset size, with $29.4 billion in AUM as compared to the next largest fund here, IJR (iShares Core S&P Small Cap, Expense Ratio 0.17%) which has approximately $16.7 billion in AUM.
Other prominent funds in this space that are designed differently from the aforementioned ETFs include Vanguard’s VB (Small Cap, Expense Ratio 0.09%, $11.7 billion in AUM), IWO (iShares Russell 2000 Growth, Expense Ratio 0.25%), IWN (iShares Russell 200 Value, Expense Ratio 0.25%), and VBR (Vanguard Small Cap Value, Expense Ratio 0.09%, $5.7 billion in AUM).
Impressively, there are five other U.S. Small Cap Equity based funds with assets above the $1 billion mark in this category, and in some cases approaching $5 billion in AUM. The message here is that there is huge evident investment interest among not only institutions but also retail investors via Small Cap ETFs.