Record ETF Volume

By Jim Wiandt

In the mesmerizing plunge of the markets, ETFs have emerged with a dominant role. 

If you are anything like me, it has been hard for you to take your eyes off of the real-time tickers as markets plunged to 3-year lows ... we MAY yet see 10,000 in the Dow, Matt. And it's been even harder to ignore the huge role ETF trading has taken in overall equity trading.

Monday was the biggest volume trading day in U.S. market history. Tuesday topped that. And per an email from the BGI folks, ETFs on Monday reached an unprecedented, stunning, 40% of total equity trading volume, on the biggest trading day (at that time) in U.S. market history (we'll let iShares keep the promo language in there as thanks for the data):

Given Monday's unprecedented events in the capital markets, we wanted to provide a quick snapshot of how ETFs behaved in the face of severe market volatility. Overall we witnessed ETFs accounting for 40% of all equity dollar volume transactions - a significant rise from the 28% daily average. In fact, volumes of all stocks nearly doubled on Monday, from $258 to $443 billion.

More specifically, ETFs experienced an even greater spike:

Monday Volume vs. August Avg.

All ETFs: $178 Billion vs. $81 Billion

All iShares: $32 Billion vs. $16 Billion