Investors Just Made a Big Bet on Global Growth and Soft Dollar

(Bloomberg) -- Inflows into the Industrial Select SPDR Fund (ticker XLI) approached $1.3 billion last week, the second-highest among U.S. equity exchange-traded funds.

Industrials are a segment of the market considered acutely sensitive to global economic activity, and this product's top holdings include firms with extensive worldwide operations, including General Electric Co., Boeing Co. and Caterpillar Inc. Those companies would tend to be among the chief beneficiaries of a synchronized pick-up in global growth and drop-off in the U.S. dollar, which increases the value of profits generated overseas.

July's non-farm payrolls report, released Aug. 4, offered a hint that the dollar's downdraft is helping to support a rotation to growth on the goods side of the U.S. economy. Employment in manufacturing rose by 16,000.

The only week the fund attracted more assets coincided with the U.S. election, when Donald Trump's victory spurred hope that a pro-growth policies like tax reform and infrastructure spending would swiftly be enacted and buoy economic activity.

To contact the reporter on this story: Luke Kawa in New York at lkawa@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jeremy Herron at jherron8@bloomberg.net, Andrew Dunn, Dave Liedtka