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Fund Investors Shake Off Tech Rout, Hope for Rebound: ETF Watch

Fund Investors Shake Off Tech Rout, Hope for Rebound: ETF Watch

(Bloomberg) -- If there’s a lesson investors took from February’s stock rout, it appears to be that the road back isn’t long, at least when it comes to technology shares.

Take the world’s largest tech exchange-traded fund -- the $20 billion Technology Select Sector SPDR Fund, known by its ticker XLK -- which has yet to see the kind of exodus you’d expect with the Nasdaq 100 Index tanking. The fund has had about $400 million of outflows since March 19, following the Facebook Inc. user data scandal, which knocked more than 7 percent off the Nasdaq 100 over the same time frame, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

While that my sound like a lot, it’s relatively small compared to the $1.2 billion investors pulled from the fund during the burst of volatility in early February.

Fund Investors Shake Off Tech Rout, Hope for Rebound: ETF Watch

“Investors are a bit more cautious of getting whipsawed this go-round,” said Mohit Bajaj, director of exchange-traded funds at WallachBeth Capital. “Many investors learned their lesson when the market roared back and technology stocks rebounded from the beginning of February.”

But not all tech funds are in the clear. The Nasdaq 100-tracking PowerShares QQQ Trust Series 1 fund, or QQQ, has had seven consecutive days of outflows totaling more than $3 billion, according to Bloomberg data.

--With assistance from Tom Lagerman

To contact the reporters on this story: Carolina Wilson in New York City at cwilson166@bloomberg.net, Rachel Evans in New York at revans43@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Arie Shapira at ashapira3@bloomberg.net, Eric J. Weiner, Andrew Dunn

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