(Bloomberg) – To those looking to blame exchange-traded funds for the market correction earlier this month, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell says they're mostly innocent.
"We looked carefully to try to understand really what did happen and it seems the markets were generally orderly through almost all of that time," Powell said during testimony to Congress Tuesday. "ETFs are a particular form of fund and I don't think they were particularly at the heart of what went on on those days."
The correction in the S&P 500 Index and the spike in the Cboe Volatility Index in early February lead to a blowup of ETF products linked to the fear gauge. This caused some investors to point to the $3.6 trillion U.S. market as one of the instigators. However, plain vanilla ETFs such as the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust, known by its ticker SPY, traded as expected.
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Still, Powell acknowledged the concern after Democratic Representative Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts asked if the Fed was worried about risks ETFs may pose to the broader financial system.
"It's something we're talking to our fellow agencies, particularly the SEC I think would be best positioned to look at this," he said. "It's a question were looking into."
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