The iShares U.S. Broker-Dealers & Securities Exchanges ETF (ticker: IAI), which tracks Wall Street’s fortunes, has been gifted an inflow of $211 million—the largest it’s seen since February 2008 and its second-biggest since its inception in 2006, reports an article in Bloomberg. On the day of the influx, trading for the fund on-exchange was roughly $30 million, which could indicate that the $211 million came from a single investor.
The fund follows securities and commodities exchanges as well as an index of financial-services providers, and holds Wall Street mainstays such as Nasdaq Inc. and Intercontinental Exchange Inc. In the wake of strong quarterly earnings from some of the major financial firms, IAI has rallied in recent weeks, shooting up 25% and reducing its year-to-date losses to roughly 5.5%, according to Bloomberg. But it’s unknown who or where the massive inflow came from. It could potentially be what’s known as “a heartbeat,” or the first half of a tax trade that starts with a very large influx and is then followed by an outflow of the same amount shortly after. But IAI doesn’t have any history of these types of trades, causing speculation that perhaps the fund has become much more appealing; as crypto crashes and digital-asset exchange FTX collapses, there’s been more interest in more traditional market trading, Todd Rosenbluth of VettaFi told Bloomberg, and “IAI provides concentrated exposure to this theme[.]”
BlackRock, which issues the fund, declined Bloomberg’s request for comment on the matter.
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