ETF Assets Top $400 Billion In November

Commodity ETFs took in about $2.2 billion of new money in November, while specialty ETFs, which include dividend-related, social, clean energy, leveraged and fundamentally weighted indices, took in $1.1 billion.

Assets in sector products had modest growth of $682 million. Materials, technology and REIT ETFs were the only categories that had positive asset flows for the month. Healthcare ETFs had the biggest outflows, followed by financials, industrials and utilities. However, short interest for the month decreased in the utility and financial sectors. (Unlike open-end mutual funds, ETFs can be sold short, meaning an investor hopes to benefit from a decline in the price.)

Broad-based products, fixed-income, global and currency products had modest asset growth in November.

The top three ETFs in terms of dollar volume for the month were the S&P 500 SPDR (SPY Quote), which is also the largest ETF with $66 billion in assets, the Nasdaq-100 Trust (QQQQ Quote) and the iShares Russell 2000 Index Fund (IWM Quote).

Other strong daily dollar volume leaders included the Energy Select SPDR(XLE Quote), Diamonds Trust (DIA Quote) and the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Index Fund(EEM Quote).

It was also a big month for product launches, as 15 new ETFs came to market. Rydex launched nine, both State Street and Claymore launched two and Vanguard and Barclays each launched one.

There have been 140 ETF launches this year and several hundred more ETFs are still in registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The total number of ETFs trading in the U.S. now stands at 344.