GLD Loses Silver Medal to Emerging-Market Fund

GLD Loses Silver Medal to Emerging-Market FundThat has caused a shakeup in the ranking of the most popular ETFs by assets. Here are the details: Gold Tarnished: Investors withdrew $6.77 billion out of SPDR Gold Shares (NYSE:GLD), the top gold bullion ETF. GLD ended April with a whopping 19% less in assets than it had at the end of March. I’ve been mentioning the risk of redemptions and cascading risk in gold funds since March, so keep an eye on this. Emerging Markets: The new No. 2 fund by assets is the Vanguard FTSE Emerging Markets ETF (NYSE:VWO) at $57.7 billion, which leapfrogged GLD despite losing assets itself. The SPDR S&P 500 ETF (NYSE:SPY) is tops by a lot at $132 billion AUM) Keeping Money In: Despite cashing out of gold and EM stock funds, investors are not throwing in the towel. Net ETF inflows totaled nearly $10 billion with U.S.-listed ETF assets up 1.6% over March to a new record of $1.49 trillion. Japanese Exuberance: The iShares MSCI Japan Index Fund (NYSE:EWJ) continues to see big popularity thanks to Abenomics and a huge run for Japan issues in 2013. It pulled in $2.72 billion in April, making it the most popular ETF last month, and EWJ is up over 20% year-to-date.