Financial News

Investors Are Pouring Money Into Tech Stocks Once Again

By Sarah Ponczek  and Carolina Wilson

•  SPDR’s XLK posted the most inflows for the week in over a year
•  QQQ took in $2 billion last week as cost of hedging plunges

Investors are once again warming up to the year’s hottest sector -- technology.


Even after regulatory and demand concerns cast a shadow over the industry, the S&P 500 Information Technology Index remains the best performer of 2018, gaining more than 10 percent. Last week, Facebook Inc. shares surged past their price before the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke, while the other members of the FANG cohort -- Amazon.com Inc., Netflix Inc. and Google parent Alphabet Inc. -- climbed as well.

Investors responded by pouring more than $670 million into the Technology Select Sector SPDR Fund, or XLK, last week. That’s the most in over a year for the world’s second-largest technology exchange-traded fund, which has about $22 billion in assets.



The ETF’s largest holding is Apple Inc., which takes up about 15 percent of the portfolio, followed by Microsoft Corp. at almost 12 percent, Alphabet at around 10 percent and Facebook at 7 percent.

Buyers have been scooping up other tech bets, too. Last week, the PowerShares QQQ Trust Series ETF, the largest technology ETF in the world with $65 billion in assets, took in more than $2 billion, the third best week of inflows for the fund in about a year. Options traders have gotten into the act as well, with the cost of hedging against a 10 percent drop in QQQ hovering near the lowest since March.