ETF inflows break the 2025 record three months early
The Vanguard S&P 500 ETF, the largest ETF in the world by assets under management, had gained more than 13 percent so far this year as of Friday morning, Reuters reported.
Enthusiasm for AI and strong earnings pushed US stocks to record highs earlier this year, and inflation fears arising from the US-Iran conflict and soaring bond yields spurred volatility last month.
A Goldman Sachs report published on Monday estimated that US pension funds alone would sell US$33bn in stocks in the days around the end of the quarter to bring target allocations back into line, funnelling the proceeds into bonds, Reuters reported.
Those projections rank the just-completed third quarter in the 98th percentile of all such estimates in absolute dollar terms going back to January 2000.
“I do think this quarter will be as significant a rebalancing as anything we’ve seen historically because volatility is higher and because of how significant the drift away from target allocations has been,” Jordan Jackson, global markets strategist at JP Morgan Asset Management, told Reuters.
