ETF Trading Report: Financial, Silver Miner ETF Are Big Movers

Thanks to lower bond yields in Europe and speculation over a strong China GDP report, investors scooped up stocks yet again in Thursday trading. All of the major indexes finished up at least 1.3% on the session, led by strength in the industrial, tech, and banking sectors.

The U.S. dollar wasn’t quite as lucky as stocks, as the benchmark U.S. dollar index slid by $0.42 to the $79.32 mark in today’s session. The greenback was mixed against the euro and the pound, lost against the yen, but gained nearly a penny against the Aussie dollar.

Commodity markets were broadly positive-- despite the flat dollar-- as pretty much every natural resource gained on the day. Crude oil added about 1.2% while soft products also gained nearly 2% across the board. Industrial metals were also strong, as copper added about seven cents a pound on hopes from China.

ETF Trading was mixed from a volume perspective, as many of the most popular products saw average days. Additionally, many popular commodity and style box ETFs also saw below average trading, despite the gains in the market (read Oil Bull Is No Place For MLP ETF Investors).

With that being said, there were certainly some exceptions, namely in the case of the Market Vectors Bank and Brokerage ETF ( RKH - ETF report ) . This fund saw volume of nearly 165,000 shares, well above the 45,000 average that the popular ETF usually sports.

This surge in volume was likely due to strong performances from many of the top holdings in the product. Big banks saw gains across the board while Citi and Bank of America both added more than 3% on the day, ahead of tomorrow’s key earnings report from bellwether JP Morgan. In total, the financial ETF gained more than 1.9% on the session, easily outpacing the broad market for the day.

Another fund which saw outsized trading volumes in Thursday trading was the Global X Silver Miners ETF ( SIL - ETF report ) . This popular ETF—which has nearly $300 million in AUM—saw volume exceed 725,000 shares, well above the 214,500 average that the product usually sees (see Silver ETFs Outshine Gold).

This huge bump in interest was probably due to the solid performance in silver during Thursday trading. The while metal added about 2.7% today on optimism in the U.S. as well as speculation over more demand in China.

Thanks to this, investors sought to gain a ‘leveraged’ way to play the precious metal in equity form. Since SIL often trades at a multiple to the underlying silver, it ended up being a strong performer on the day, adding close to 4.6% for the session and spurring increased interest from a variety of mining ETF investors.

See more on ETFs at the Zacks ETF Center.