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ETF Fund Flows reports daily creations and redemptions for an ETF share class, expressed in the fund’s currency. Each observation is associated with an etf_id, a valuation date, the previous valuation date it was measured against, and a status saying whether the flow could be trusted. Flows are calculated by FocusAlpha rather than reported by the issuer.
Plan: Professional and above · Credits: 1 per call

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What You Can Use ETF Fund Flows For

Identify which funds are gathering assets and which are bleeding them, independent of market moves. Separate a change in assets under management into performance and flow. Rank a peer group by twenty-day net flow to find where money is rotating. Cross flows against ETF Classification to measure flows into a sector, a factor or a wrapper type rather than into a single fund.

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How ETF Fund Flows Are Calculated

Flow for a day is the change in split-adjusted shares outstanding since the previous valuation date, multiplied by the previous day’s split-adjusted NAV. That is the standard construction: new shares are created and redeemed at NAV, so the share count is what moves when money moves. Because both inputs are split-adjusted, a share split does not produce a phantom flow.

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Key ETF Fund Flow Fields

valuation_date is the date the flow is attributed to. previous_valuation_date is the date it was measured against, which is not always the prior calendar day. shares_change is the change in split-adjusted shares outstanding. flow is that change valued at the previous day’s NAV, in the fund’s currency; a negative value is a net redemption. flow_status says whether the number is usable.

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Why an ETF Fund Flow Can Be Null

A flow of null with a flow_status of no_flow means shares multiplied by NAV did not reconcile to the fund’s filed net assets on that day, so no flow number is published for it. FocusAlpha does not invent a number when the identity fails; a null here is a refusal, not a gap. Days where the fund did not publish, or published only part of the inputs, likewise carry no flow.

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ETF Fund Flow Date Convention

valuation_date is the date the flow is attributed to, and it matches the valuation_date of the underlying NAV series. previous_valuation_date is the earlier date used in the difference. When a fund skips a publication day, the two dates are more than one session apart and the flow covers the whole gap — read previous_valuation_date before annualising or summing.

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ETF Fund Flow Sources

Flows are calculated by FocusAlpha from issuer-published shares outstanding and issuer-published NAV. No vendor flow estimate is used, and no flow is modelled from price or volume.

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Query ETF Fund Flows

Use the ETF history endpoint with series=flow to retrieve the daily flow series for one fund.
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string
required
etf_id (E000011), a ticker (SPY), an ISIN, or a CUSIP.
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string
required
Set to flow for this dataset.
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string
Earliest valuation date to return, YYYY-MM-DD. date_lte sets the ceiling.
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integer
default:"250"
Rows per page, between 1 and 1000. Pages run newest to oldest via cursor.
To screen many funds by flow at once rather than reading one fund’s history, use the min_flow_20d and max_flow_20d filters on ETF Screening. See also ETF NAV and Shares Outstanding for the inputs this series is built from, ETF Screening for cross-fund flow filters, and ETF Classification for grouping flows by segment.