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• Daily ETF Flows: DIA Gathers $458M
• Daily ETF Flows: Assets Jump To Record $1.476T
• Wall St. Bears Turn Bullish, Investors Agree

• DIA 67% Rate It
• EEM 83% Rate It
• EFA 0% Rate It
• GLD 77% Rate It
• IWM 50% Rate It

Fear returned to financial markets in May, as exchange-traded fund investors fled riskier assets and piled into safer havens such as gold and, notably, Pimco's money-market proxy ETF, "MINT," which added nearly $600 million and finally put the biggest bond-fund manager in the world on the ETF map, according to data compiled by IndexUniverse.com

The single-biggest winning fund was the State Street Global Advisors SPDR Gold Trust (NYSEArca:GLD), which added $4.22 billion in assets, bringing the total to $49.21 billion, as fiscal problems in the eurozone disrupted some of the cautious optimism that had been growing among investors. The so-called flash crash on May 6 also rattled investors' nerves and fueled the flight-to-safety trade.

May's surprise story was Pimco's Enhanced Short Maturity Strategy Fund (NYSEArca:MINT), an actively managed fund that hauled in $596.4 million in new assets. That was the lion's share of the Newport Beach, Calif.-based firm's $622 million in new ETF assets, and helped bring Pimco's total ETF assets under management to $1.55 billion, a nearly 50 percent increase over April's total.

Bookending the top 10 losing funds last month were the PowerShares QQQ (NYSEArca:QQQQ), the Nasdaq 100 ETF, which suffered worst-in-class outflows of $2.36 billion; and SSgA's Dow Diamonds SPDR ETF (NYSEArca:DIA) which was No. 10 in redemptions at $333.8 million. The Nasdaq fund now has $18.42 billion in assets, while DIA has $8.05 billion. In the middle, investors fled ETFs tracking volatility and growth.

Biggest Losers ($, Millions)

iShares Still Rules The Roost

MINT's strong showing almost single-handedly pushed Pimco up to become the 15 ^th -biggest U.S. ETF firm from 19 ^th -biggest last month.

As you would expect, most of the top places on the league tables were unchanged in May. While BlackRock, parent of iShares, saw redemptions of $1.28 billion in May, it still stood atop the ETF world with $368.24 billion in assets.

SSgA held on to its No. 2 spot, adding $6.03 billion, most of it from its gold fund GLD. Its assets totaled $195.01 billion at the end of last month.

Vanguard again rounded out the top three, with $2.49 billion in new assets, bringing its total to $103.06 billion.

VWO Train Still Chugging

Vanguard's biggest draw continued to be its MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (NYSEArca:VWO), which added $2.00 billion, with total assets now at $23.94 billion. That's below last month's total of $24.24 billion, a reflection of the negative performance that gripped all global equities markets last month.

While VWO remains the fifth-biggest U.S. ETF, it is still on track to overtake iShares' MSCI Emerging Markets Index Fund (NYSEArca:EEM) by the end of the year. For the moment, EEM remains the single-biggest emerging markets fund. EEM attracted $970.7 million, bringing its total assets to $33.21 billion, also lower than last month's total.

Still, EEM crawled up one slot last month to become the third-biggest U.S. ETF. It switched places with the iShares MSCI EAFE Index Fund (NYSEArca:EFA), which is focused on industrialized countries outside of the U.S. and Canada.

Even though EFA added $30 million in assets last month, it ended May with $31.83 billion in assets, a drop of more than 11 percent caused by the sell-off last month.

The biggest U.S. ETF remained the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (NYSEArca:SPY), which gathered $2.42 billion in new assets. But SPY also lost ground in the correction, with total money at $70.63 billion at the end of May, compared with $74.44 billion a month earlier.

The No. 2 ETF was SSgA's GLD. As noted above, the gold fund benefited from the anxiety coursing through financial markets, adding $4.22 billion to lift total assets to $49.21 billion.

ETF Giants ($, Millions)

Most Traded Funds

SSgA's SPY remained the most traded ETF, with a turnover of $869.46 billion in May, while the iShares Russell 2000 ETF (NYSEArca:IWM) was in the No. 2 slot at $152.40 billion.

Rounding out the top three was the PowerShares QQQ at $142.97 billion in turnover.

Liquidity Mavens

Don't forget to check IndexUniverse.com's ETF Data section.

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