Wall Street continued its stellar run in October with the S&P 500 logging in gains of 2.2%. This not only represents the best month since February but also the seventh straight month of advances — its longest streak since May 2013. As such, investors flocked to the two ultra-popular ETFs tracking the index last month.

SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY – Free Report) and iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (IVV- Free Report) have pulled in about $7.1 billion and $3.5 billion, respectively, in capital. IVV looks more compelling at present given its solid Zacks ETF Rank #2 (Buy). SPY has a Zacks ETF Rank #3 (Hold).

IVV in Focus

IVV holds 506 stocks in its basket, with each security holding no more than 3.9% of total assets. This suggests a nice balance across securities and prevents heavy concentration. However, the product is slightly tilted toward the information technology sector with 24.1% share, while financials, health care, consumer discretionary and industrials account for a double-digit exposure each. The ETF is the low-cost choice in the space, charging 4 bps in fees per year from investors and trades in solid volume of 3.3 million shares a day on average. It gained 1.7% in October.

Inside The Surge

Most of the gains came from the surge in technology sector, which had its best monthly gain of 7.7% since July 2016. A deluge of better-than-expected earnings results across various sectors as well as high hopes of the tax reform getting passed added to the strength.

In fact, five technology stocks — Amazon (AMZN – Free Report) , Microsoft (MSFT – Free Report) , Google-parent Alphabet (GOOGL – Free Report) , Apple (AAPL – Free Report) , and Facebook (FB – Free Report) — accounted for more than half of the gains in the S&P 500 index. Three of the five companies reported blockbuster quarterly earnings, sending their shares higher while Facebook and Apple are slated to release their earnings after the market close on Nov 1 and Nov 2, respectively.