Bloomberg senior ETF ******* yst Eric Balchunas says the "debasement trade" is increasingly stealing attention from artificial intelligence, pointing to record demand for gold and Bitcoin exchange-traded funds.
"Gold and Bitcoin ETFs have combined for +$7b in flows in past week, by far a record for a 5-day period as debasement trade steals spotlight from AI," Balchunas wrote on X on Aug. 26.
He said SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) and BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) led the move, with both ranking among the 10 most-traded ETFs over the week.
Balchunas also noted that IBIT's year-to-date flows had turned positive after recovering from earlier outflows.
The latest comment builds on a post a day earlier, when Balchunas said GLD and IBIT had returned to the top 10 most-traded ETFs while semiconductor funds, which dominated much of the summer, slipped down the rankings.

#Bitcoin #traded #ibit

Investors just moved a record $7 billion into gold and Bitcoin (BTC) funds in five days. Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan blames a flaw in the 60/40 portfolio, which is 100% exposed to fiat currency.
Bloomberg senior ETF ******* yst Eric Balchunas calls it the debasement trade, a bet on ******* ets no government can print. This week, that bet pushed AI funds out of the headlines.
SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) took in $3.4 billion in the week through August 21. BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) added just over $1 billion, data shows.
Meanwhile, the VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH) bled $1.7 billion, more than any other fund. Money did not leave the market. It switched sides.
"DEBASER: Gold and Bitcoin ETFs have combined for +$7b in flows in past week, by far a record for a 5-day period as debasement trade steals spotlight from AI. GLD, IBIT leading, in Top 10 for week. Also notable $IBIT YTD flows are now positive, completely dug out of sizable hole," Balchunas shared.

#trade

Frances Newton, CIO of Tuttle Capital Management, joins Scarlet Fu and Eric Balchunas on "ETF IQ." They discuss a report that the US Treasury could draw down some of its cash pile to fund buybacks of higher-yielding older securities in a bid to tackle rising borrowing costs.

#frances #tuttle

Investors have poured more than $100 billion into exchange-traded funds every month for 14 consecutive months, a streak, Bloomberg ETF ******* yst Eric Balchunas says, would have been almost unthinkable just a few years ago.
"ETFs have taken in over $100b for 14 straight months," Balchunas said on Thursday, citing a chart shared by fellow Bloomberg ETF ******* yst Athanasios Psarofagis. "Prior to this streak, a $100b month had happened ONE TIME EVER."
The chart shows how quickly the milestone has gone from an anomaly to routine.
According to Balchunas, the previous $100 billion month occurred roughly two-and-a-half years before the current streak began.
The surge comes as ETFs take a growing share of investor portfolios. Global ETF ******* ets reached a record $23.08 trillion at the end of May, after attracting $1.07 trillion in net inflows during the first five months of 2026, according to ETFGI.

#balchunas #month

The attraction to make short-term market bets is real. When you think what everyone knows is wrong, it's tempting to place a bet. And while Kalshi and Polymarket may be better venues for "someone is wrong on the internet" proof-trading, ETFs offer clean, efficient ways to lose your money too.
Or maybe -- maybe -- make some.
On a recent episode of ETF Zoo, Bloomberg's Eric Balchunas made the point that some speculators lately had been getting these market-timing calls right. He later ran the numbers on ProShares UltraPro QQQ, the 3x leveraged Nasdaq-100 ETF.
This toe-dip into matching flows with performance got me thinking about "the other big trade" of the last year or so that's not AI: Energy. That's where all the headlines about insider trading have been, so taking the cue from Eric, I had to figure out: have ETF investors been playing the energy trade this well?
Betting on energy is the least secret, least insider trade in the world right now—unless you have access to the Oval, like some traders apparently do. There should be no edge in it. Short-term trading here is simply a bet that you know something the most important commodity market in the world doesn't know (or, you have better hunch.) Historically, this is a bad idea. That was my prior: disaster.

#market #short #make

A top Bloomberg ***** yst has a bold idea for Warren Buffett. Eric Balchunas says the investor should give his Berkshire Hathaway shares to Trump Accounts, the new government investment accounts for American children.
Balchunas shared the idea on Tuesday. Buffett, 95, plans to give away his remaining Berkshire stake, worth about $140 billion, by the end of 2034.
Trump Accounts launched on July 4. They were created under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a new tax law. Every eligible child born between 2025 and 2028 gets a $1,000 deposit from the Treasury.
Families can add up to $5,000 per year. The money sits in an S&P 500 index fund called SPYM by default. The Treasury picked Robinhood and BNY to run the app and the accounts.
Balchunas, the senior ETF ***** yst at Bloomberg Intelligence, thinks the accounts are a natural match for Buffett. Almost all of Buffett's wealth is Berkshire stock. He has also promised to give more than 99% of it away.

#buffett #balchunas #give

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You've heard of the luck of the Irish. Want to bet on the luck of the ****** et manager?
Tidal Investments and Subversive Capital have filed a prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission for an "event contracts" exchange-traded fund tied to the outcomes of sports games. In other words, a sports gambling ETF. The Subversive All Season Sports ETF will have exposure to 40 to 80 bets at once, attempting to generate alpha by betting on where the adviser thinks the market's odds are wrong. The filing also included a related fund, the Subversive Prediction ETF, tied to "economic, regulatory, climate and global events themes." With the Securities and Exchange Commission still weighing approval of novel funds like these, whether they will actually make it to the market is a toss-up.
"They're pretty much a pro-innovation SEC," said Eric Balchunas, senior ETF ****** yst at Bloomberg Intelligence. Still, he theorized that the SEC wants to make sure it has a consistent framework in place to approve prediction market ETFs. "I think their issue here is that if they approve one of these, they could see 500 to 1,000 filings within a month or two. It would be raining filings."
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Morgan Stanley Bitcoin ETF ready for ‘imminent’ launch. Here’s why that’s a big ...

A few years ago, few could have imagined that Morgan Stanley would launch its own spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund.
After all, its former top executive, James Gorman, said in 2024 that he never understood the value of Bitcoin.
Things have changed now, and with the “imminent” launch of a Morgan Stanley Bitcoin ETF, the $83 billion already sitting in Bitcoin ETFs is about to get a whole lot bigger.
On social media, Eric Balchunas, a senior ETF ***** yst at Bloomberg Intelligence, shared a screenshot of a p

BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund IBIT, has emerged as a notable outlier on the 2025 ETF flow leaderboard, ranking sixth by year-to-date inflows despite posting a negative return for the year, according to data highlighted by Bloomberg Intelligence **** yst Eric Balchunas.
IBIT is currently the only ETF among the top flow leaders showing a year-to-date loss, with returns down roughly 9.6%. Yet the fund has still attracted approximately $25.4 billion in net inflows, placing it ahead of a range of established equity and commodity products — including the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD), which