To answer your question: Yes, investment flows tend to be trend following, people put money in when the market has been doing well and pull it out when it's bee

To answer your question: Yes, investment flows tend to be trend following, people put money in when the market has been doing well and pull it out when it's been doing poorly. There are macroeconomic reasons for this, since people tend to be cash poor in downturns and cash rich in booms, but there also seems to be psychological 'returns chasing' behavior which hurts the median investor's returns. Here's a source using mutual fund flows, which shouldn't be fundamentally different than ETF fund flows: http://www.businessinsider.com/blackrock-sp-500-vs-equity-fund-flow-2013-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/blackrock-sp-500-vs-equity-fu...