Very interesting (thanks for the ping, though I'm not sure of what ETFs are). It would explain the early stampede to the exits (I can't find any substantiative info or serious market trigger levels like Dow 11K that would have triggered the early exit).
Getting back to $orea$$ and company, methinks it goes back a bit further than a lot of people give credit for. It seems I am the only one that remembers the market's insanity of 1998-1999, where job loss was good and each report of companies adding jobs was worth a 100 point drop in the Dow.
ETFs are the Exchanged Trade Closed End Funds.
This link will take you to the 111 top ETFs. It ranks them re gain in today's markets.
You can see that most of the gains were in US Treasury ETFs.
http://finance.yahoo.com/etf/browser/mkt?c=0&k=5&f=0&o=d&cs=1&ce=111 I use this site to help buy or sell ETFs and to help me buy mutual funds on a dip and sell mutual funds on a rise. ETFs are sold during the market day. Mutual funds supposedly are sold and bought at the end of the market day based on the value of the stocks owned by the mutual funds.
For example in Jan and Feb I bought a few mutual funds which owned businesses in Europe. I bought the funds when the Euro ETFs took a hit or dip. When I sell them, I will sell them when the Euro ETFs are rising. That manuever will often gain me 1 to 2% on the buy, (the dip) and then a repeat on the sale. This is even more critical/helpful re when to buy bond funds or to sell them.