According to the Investment Company institute (ICI), year-to-date, investors have taken some $291 billion out of mutual funds and exchange traded funds.

But that’s not the whole story.

The ICI’s numbers represent net flows, meaning there were inflows, but they were dwarfed by outflows.

The story isn’t about net outflows, it’s about where the money went that flowed into the market.

Here’s where most of the money went and why you should follow it…

I’m going to let Janis Joplin tell you what to expect and what to do with equity markets this week and this month.

“Get it while you can.”

That title lyric was on Janis’ 1971 posthumous album Pearl, and it’s what investors need to remind themselves to do.

Because the dramatic bounce off the March lows has maybe a little more to go, at least for some stocks, before markets give up the ghost of depressions past and head back down to earth, maybe below, meaning towards the fiery place way under our feet.

But not all is lost, yet. Before the storm last week, which came Thursday and Friday, stocks were riding news that big tech earnings were hardly indicative of a depression on the horizon…

Fear makes us do dumb things. But we beg of you… don’t pull the ejection handle.

Despite the economy heading down a rabbit hole, stock markets are looking up, not down.

It doesn’t matter that it seems crazy, and it yet may be just that, but investors are betting the worst’s behind us, at least for markets, and the other side of all the panic and shutting down is here.

After all, countries are reopening. Businesses are reopening. And people just want to go out…

The secret momentum driver elevating market indexes to all-time highs, again and again, is none-other than the “passive investing” trend. It’s going on unbeknownst to even the drivers of this momentum bus.

Investors who don’t understand how big an impact money flowing into index funds has had on the market’s performance probably have no idea what could happen if the trend stalls, or worse, reverses.

Here are the pitfalls of passive investing and how bad the fallout could be if passive investors discover the trap they’ve entered, turn active, and sell.

The almost self-perpetuating cycle of rising markets attracting passive investment capital into index products, which boosts the value of indexes as money flows into them, which attracts more sidelined money and compels investors to sell actively managed funds and buy passive index-following funds, which have been lowering their management fees since they aren’t actively managed, which attracts more investor capital into the growing universe of index funds, which keep increasing in value as sponsors and their authorized participants buy all the underlying stocks in the indexes they track when investors buy those packaged products in the open market, is, almost self-perpetuating.

But you know the saying, almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.

The truth is passive investing’s virtuous positive momentum manufacturing feedback loop isn’t a guarantee.

What passive investors aren’t seeing, because they aren’t looking through or behind the mad rush into what looks like a better mouse trap, is that more money flowing into index funds increases systemic risks inherent in the investment.

Books help us become better, smarter and happier. And there’s no better time than now to debut our summer reading list.

As we start a new week – another week with the nation locked in its homes – we worry about a lesser-understood evil.

A $2 trillion “stimulus” package was passed into law last week. And the nation cheered. But we say we should all hang our heads and weep.

Like a scar across the cheek from a blow we never saw coming, the effects of the coronavirus will last forever. We need to open our minds to this reality.

Things are tough out there. We’ve never seen anything quite like it before. So we’re checking in on you.