Bloomberg’s ETF Guru Watched $7 Billion Pour Into a Falling Treasury Fund, Then Warned Buyers to Walk Away

Eric Balchunas tracks where ETF money goes for a living. On Friday, the Bloomberg ETF analyst looked at the cash flowing into the iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (NASDAQ:TLT) and told buyers to walk past it.

He posted on X on Oct. 2: “Money keeps pouring into $TLT as it keeps going down, and the more it goes down the more tempting it gets, like a bowl of ice cream and each 1% move down is another topping and you’re starving. If history is any guide it’s best to just walk past the ice cream”

Then he made a confession. In a reply posted minutes later, he admitted that his own list of beaten-down picks mostly fell further: “yep I used to do a list called lovable losers when I was younger and I thought i was so clever and most of them went down more, it’s counterintuitive, harder than it looks. VOO & Chill is much easier.” He was pointing to the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (NYSEARCA:VOO).

Here’s why that matters for your money. As of Friday afternoon, TLT is down 36.31% over five years. VOO is up 89.89% over the same period.

Traders Poured In $7 Billion, Then Watched TLT Slide

The $7 billion figure comes from Balchunas’s own flow post on Sept. 16. In that post, he noted the inflow into TLT ahead of the Federal Reserve meeting.

Since then, the fund has fallen 3.53%, from $80.56 to $77.71 at the Oct. 1 close. On Friday afternoon it traded at $77.41, down 0.39% on the day.

The buying goes well beyond one fund. In an Oct. 1 post, Balchunas said bond ETFs took in $23 billion over the past five days. That was 62% of all net flows, even though bond funds make up just 15% of ETF assets.

Retail investors appear to be part of the trade. TLT ranked among Reddit’s most-discussed tickers on Sept. 25, right next to the biggest tech names.

Rising Yields Are Doing the Damage

TLT holds U.S. Treasury bonds that mature in 20 years or more. Bonds like these have high “duration,” which measures how much a bond’s price moves when interest rates change. When yields rise, the prices of existing bonds fall, and the longest bonds fall the most.

Yields have rose quickly. The 10-year Treasury yield reached 5.29% on Sept. 30, up from 4.48% on July 6. On Oct. 1, the 20-year yield stood at 5.64%. Bloomberg reported on Sept. 28 that rising yields had traders buying up options on BlackRock ETFs.

Balchunas has pointed to a second problem. On Sept. 23, he wrote that a core broad-market bond ETF used to rise 90% of the time when the S&P 500 fell. Now it rises only 40% of the time. He described it as a “Major development.”

Scoreboard Shows Why Balchunas Picks VOO & Chill

The case for buying TLT now comes down to yield. Long Treasuries pay above 5.6%, and when rates eventually fall, long-duration bonds usually rally the strongest. The open question is timing. Balchunas’s point is that each drop makes the fund look cheaper but gives no signal about when the slide will end. His own list showed that bargain hunting is “harder than it looks.”

Fees aren’t the issue. TLT’s expense ratio is 0.15%, according to its prospectus dated June 29, 2026.

Yields, Flows and Bond Funds Will Set the Next Move

Keep an eye on three things: whether money keeps flowing into TLT as it falls, where the 10-year yield goes after its run to 5.29%, and signs of stress at bond mutual funds. On Sept. 29, Balchunas noted the active bond funds with the worst September returns, calling them “Bond MF Canaries in the Rising Rate Coal Mine.”

If yields keep rising, the next wave of TLT buying will show whether dip buyers listen to the analyst whose own data shows how crowded the trade has become.

Data Sources

• Eric Balchunas X post, Oct. 2, 2026: source of his “lovable losers” confession and “VOO & Chill” quote, used to set up the comparison between buying the dip and owning the index.

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