October 23, 2017 01:00 AM

It's all relative; investors hot on international equity and bond ETFs, cool on U.S. ETFs

Year-to-date Sept. 30, investors have put more than $125 billion into international equity exchange-traded funds, while redeeming about $10 billion from the asset class. U.S. equity ETFs, dominated by the massive S&P 500 tracking vehicles managed by State Street Global Advisors, BlackRock's iShares and Vanguard, brought in about $102 billion, while losing about $19 billion.

Taxable bond funds added $102 billion, bringing in $32 for every $1 of redemptions, at the same time international equity ETFs brought in $12 for every $1 of outflows. U.S. equity funds had about a 5-to-1 ratio of inflows to outflows and the ratio of commodity fund cash flows was about 2-to-1.

Notably, SSGA's SPDR S&P 500 ETF had about $9.3 billion in outflows, more than half of all U.S. equity ETF redemptions, while its iShares counterpart, took in $23.3 billion.