Its no secret that the Exchange-Traded Funds has been put under pressure recently. Wall Street's constant volatility has led to record volumes of trading in the past few weeks, mounting pressure on ETFs due to their nature of containing a variety of stocks, commodities, or bonds. To add even more pressure, global assets held by ETFs have doubled in size within the last four years, reaching a record $6.4 trillion in value in 2019. Many fund regulators have raised concern that the ETF market could bring more market turmoil is a larger number of investors choose to leave the market at once as many funds are selling at unclear values.
A recent trend investors have been making is moving towards bond ETFs as U.S. Treasuries continue to reach record highs amid the market uncertainty. Bonds and cash really seem to be the only "safe" trade as uncertain investors push their money out of the markets at an alarming rate.
Yet, amid all of this investment uncertainty, market participants in it for the long haul are using this record-low market as a buying opportunity. The Nasdaq 100 Index ETF, Invesco QQQ Trust Series 1 (NASDAQ: QQQ), has taken a record inflow for March 2020, that being $4.5 billion so far according to Bloomberg. That is the most inflow the fund has had in over two decades. Some investors are using this time to bet on popular FAANG stocks--Facebook (NASDAQ: FB), Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) and Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL)--as well as Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) that they know will be able to survive the coronavirus fueled market turmoil.
"I think tech stocks are a good place to dip your toes back into the water, that makes total sense to me," Bob Philips, managing member of Spectrum Management Group told Bloomberg. "It's their ability to access cash at very favorable borrowing levels and their growth prospects because out economy is going to grow again, and tech will be key component of where that growth will come from."
It seems that as a trader that is investing for retirement, or other long-term investment strategies, should use this market sell-off as a time to invest in high valued stocks at dramatically low prices.