The U.S. bourses saw one of the most turbulent weeks in years with the stocks swinging dramatically as worries over the China slowdown peaked, oil prices slumped, the emerging markets reflected weakness, and the interest rates rise again looks uncertain. However, the benchmarks managed to cross all the hurdles and ended the week with modest gains.

This is especially true as the S&P 500 and Dow Jones gained 0.9% and 1.1% respectively last week while the Nasdaq Composite index rose 2.6%. The level of volatility has been acute and can easily be depicted by the weekly asset flows. The largest and ultra-popular SPDR S&P 500 (SPY – ETF report), tracking the S&P 500 with an asset base of around $168.3 billion and average daily volume of around 120 million shares, pulled in about a billion dollars in capital last week following a massive outflow of over $5 billion in the first three days, according to data compiled by etf.com.