Big flow

In an apparent bid to take advantage of rising prices, investors shoveled nearly $24 billion into equity funds in the last week, thanks to a rush into big ETFs. Like the AAII survey, big inflows are treated as an automatic contrary indicator and a negative for forward returns. According to the Backtest Engine, there have been 12 weeks in the past decade with inflows of more than $15 billion in a single week. Over the next 8 weeks, the S&P 500 was higher after 9 of them, averaging +1.3%. None of them preceded major declines.