IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/finrev/v49y2014i3p619-642.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

What Drives ETF Flows?

Author

Listed:
  • Christopher P. Clifford
  • Jon A. Fulkerson
  • Bradford D. Jordan

Abstract

The value of exchange traded fund (ETF) assets has increased from $66 billion in 2000 to almost a trillion dollars in 2010. We use this massive expansion in ETF assets to study what drives ETF flows. Using a data set of over 500 ETFs from 2001 to 2010, we show that ETF investors chase returns in the same way as mutual fund investors. While there is an active debate about whether return chasing by mutual fund investors represents the pursuit of superior talent, the existence of return chasing in this passively managed environment should not represent a search for skilled managers. We also show that ETF flows increase following high volume, small spreads, and high price/net asset value ratios. Finally, we find little evidence of superior market timing in ETF flows. Our results suggest that return chasing in both mutual funds and ETFs is more likely the result of naïve extrapolation bias on the part of investors that has contributed to the growth of the ETF industry.

Suggested Citation

  • Christopher P. Clifford & Jon A. Fulkerson & Bradford D. Jordan, 2014. "What Drives ETF Flows?," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 49(3), pages 619-642, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:finrev:v:49:y:2014:i:3:p:619-642
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/fire.12049
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hua Wang & Liao Xu, 2019. "Do exchange‐traded fund flows increase the volatility of the underlying index? Evidence from the emerging market in China," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 58(5), pages 1525-1548, March.
    2. Tang, Lu & Tan, Eric K.M. & Low, Rand, 2024. "Complements or substitutes? The effect of ETFs on other managed funds," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 95(PB).
    3. Jędrzej Białkowski & Huong Dieu Dang & Xiaopeng Wei, 2017. "Does the Tail Wag the Dog? Evidence from Fund Flow to VIX ETFs and ETNs," Working Papers in Economics 17/17, University of Canterbury, Department of Economics and Finance.
    4. Atanasova, Christina & Weisskopf, Jean-Philippe, 2020. "The price of international equity ETFs: The role of relative liquidity," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    5. Pagano, Marco & Sánchez Serrano, Antonio & Zechner, Jozef, 2019. "Can ETFs contribute to systemic risk?," Report of the Advisory Scientific Committee 9, European Systemic Risk Board.
    6. Zura Kakushadze & Willie Yu, 2022. "ETF Risk Models," Bulletin of Applied Economics, Risk Market Journals, vol. 9(1), pages 1-17.
    7. Peltomäki, Jarkko, 2017. "Beta as a determinant of investor activity in sector exchange-traded funds," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 137-145.
    8. Yousefi, Hamed & Najand, Mohammad, 2022. "Geographical diversification using ETFs: Multinational evidence from COVID-19 pandemic," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    9. Damien Kunjal & Faeezah Peerbhai & Paul-Francois Muzindutsi, 2022. "Political, economic, and financial country risks and the volatility of the South African Exchange Traded Fund market: A GARCH-MIDAS approach," Risk Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 24(3), pages 236-258, September.
    10. Hamed Yousefi & Mohammad Najand & Licheng Sun, 2024. "The flow‐performance puzzle: Insights from passive and active ETFs," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 64(4), pages 3623-3656, December.
    11. Staer, Arsenio & Sottile, Pedro, 2018. "Equivalent volume and comovement," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 143-157.
    12. Sina Ehsani & Donald Lien, 2015. "Effects of Passive Intensity on Aggregate Price Dynamics," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 50(3), pages 363-391, August.
    13. Leung, David Wing Yu & Wong, Joe Ho-Yeung & Fong, Tom Pak-Wing, 2024. "Run risks of cash-redeemable ETFs," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    14. Sherrill, D. Eli & Stark, Jeffrey R., 2018. "ETF liquidation determinants," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 357-373.
    15. Bae, Kyounghun & Kim, Daejin, 2020. "Liquidity risk and exchange-traded fund returns, variances, and tracking errors," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(1), pages 222-253.
    16. Weber, Martin & Mueller-Dethard, Jan, 2020. "The Portfolio Composition Effect," CEPR Discussion Papers 15012, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    17. Timothy Krause & Sina Ehsani & Donald Lien, 2014. "Exchange-traded funds, liquidity and volatility," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(24), pages 1617-1630, December.
    18. Padma Kadiyala, 2022. "Response of ETF flows and long-run returns to investor sentiment," Financial Markets and Portfolio Management, Springer;Swiss Society for Financial Market Research, vol. 36(4), pages 489-531, December.
    19. Noam Ben-Ze'ev, 2023. "Drivers of Flows-Performance Sensitivity in Mutual Funds," Bank of Israel Working Papers 2023.06, Bank of Israel.
    20. Rakowski, David & Shirley, Sara, 2020. "What drives the market for exchange-traded notes?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:finrev:v:49:y:2014:i:3:p:619-642. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/efaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.