High Yield ETF Volume and Flows Update

The blue line in the chart below shows the 50-day moving average of high yield bond volume currently stands at $7.44 billion.

The green line shows the 50-day value of all high-yield ETF trading. This totals about 30 ETFs with BlackRock’s iShares iBoxx High Yield Corporate Bond ETF (HYG) and Bloomberg Barclay’s High Yield Bond ETF (JNK) accounting for roughly two-thirds of this total.

The red line shows high yield ETF dollar volume as a percentage of underlying cash volume. ETFs now account for 25% of the volume of the cash market. This metric was essentially zero in 2008.

The chart below shows year-to-date flows into high yield ETFs.

The top panel (black) shows the Bloomberg high yield option-adjusted spread (OAS). It is plotted inversely to mimic price.
The second panel (blue) shows the cumulative flows into high yield ETFs.
The third panel (red) shows the change in assets since January 1 in all high yield ETFs.
The bottom panel (green) subtracts the cumulative flows (blue) from total assets (red) to show a running P&L for the year-to-date flows.