ETF Assets Feel Market Pinch

The weak stock market has affected the exchange traded fund universe, with total assets in ETFs falling $33 billion, or 5.4%, since the beginning of the year, to $575 billion, through the end of June 2008. By contrast, the S&P 500 fell 12%. According to State Street Global Advisors in its 2008 Mid-Year Exchange Traded Fund Report, as of June 30 there were 698 ETFs in the U.S., and while total assets declined, State Street said the number of ETF shares outstanding increased in nearly every ETF category. Not surprisingly in a bear market, the 78 inverse and leveraged funds in the market doubled their assets, to $20.3 billion, and three of those funds–UltraShort Financials, Utltrashort QQQ, and Ultrashort S&P 500 Proshares–cracked the list of the top 10 ETFs with the highest daily dollar trading volume. However, those ETFs still lag far behind the leader, the SPDR S&P 500, which has a daily trading volume of 258 million shares, and average daily dollar volume of $32.965 billion.