Lipper

Mutual fund investors continued their New Year’s resolution to buy more stock funds; this past week they added another $2.6 billion to those accounts. Investors also continued to favor equity funds that are focused on companies outside the U.S., adding $1.7 billion in net sales to nondomestic equity funds and just $900 million to domestic equity mutual funds. Core portfolio holdings such as those in Lipper’s Large-Cap Core Funds (-$255 million) and S&P 500 Index Objective Funds (-$147 million) classifications led the losers column; investors favored multi- and small-cap fund strategies instead. Equity exchange-traded funds (ETFs) had just $237 million of net inflows as investors remained noncommittal to SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY), which had an unremarkable outflow of $696 million; SPDR Gold (GLD) led the equity ETF outflows list at $1.4 billion.

Jeff Tjornehoj, Lipper's Head of Americas Research, discusses flows activity for the first week of December.

For the week ended Wednesday, November 21, mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) investors still seemed cautious; they injected roughly $15.8 billion in net new cash for the week, with $20.5 billion net going to money market accounts. Equity products seemed immune to the market rebound; they experienced nearly $7.3 billion in net redemptions for the week—for the largest weekly outflow since July of this year. Results for taxable bond funds (+$671 million) were very similar to those of the previous week. Investors continued to shed risk as corporate high-yield funds reported net outflows of $1.1 billion; corporate investment-grade, with $1.1 billion in net sales, nearly offset the redemptions. Investors also sought refuge in U.S. Treasury funds, injecting $408 million—for the group’s third consecutive week of net inflows. Concerns over increases in investment income tax rates pushed investors to seek exposure in the tax-exempt products; the group pulled in $1.1 billion.

To say we had a wild ending for October would be a gross understatement as the East Coast of the U.S. prepared for and endured one of the most powerful storms in that area’s history. Adversely affecting the coastline from North Carolina to Massachusetts, “Super Storm” Sandy dealt a blow to America’s financial hub, closing U.S. markets for two consecutive days—an event not seen since 1888. With some operations running on backup power, the stock exchanges were able to reopen on Wednesday, handling the higher average volume but ending the session slightly down. With only three trading days to work with, investors’ action in mutual funds and ETFs (excluding money market funds) was relatively flat, posting net outflows of $754 million. Despite the equity markets’ posting their first monthly loss since May, stock ETFs continued to garner assets with net inflows of $1.3 billion—breaking a two-week losing streak. On the other side of the coin equity mutual fund investors continued to look for the door, pulling roughly $1.4 billion from their accounts. Once again the majority of assets came out of U.S. Diversified Equity products. As a bit of a surprise, taxable bond funds posted their first net outflow in 17 weeks and for only the fourth time this year. Corporate investment-grade products were able to attract net inflows of $291 million, while investors turned their back on high-yield funds—$619 million in net outflows. Municipals also seemed to suffer from the shortened week; they reported net redemptions of $123 million, breaking their 28-week inflow streak. Money market funds, with $23.5 billion in net outflows, saw the most action among the asset groups—their largest since August 2011. And with $24.6 billion coming from institutional accounts, much of the move may have been attributed to quarter-end tax deadlines.

A rough start to earnings season turned away equity fund investors this past week. Following the previous week’s first positive fund flows in nine weeks, equity fund investors pulled the plug on more additions and instead withdrew $200 million from their accounts for the week ended October 24, 2012. Domestic equity funds bore the brunt of the outflows with $806 million withdrawn, while nondomestic equity funds took in $605 million. Taxable bond funds had one of their better weeks this year, seizing about $3.6 billion. Investors continued to downshift their purchases of junk bond funds; the High Yield group posted inflows of just $86 million, while core-investment choice Corporate Investment-Grade Funds saw inflows of $1.3 billion and weak-dollar play International & Global Debt funds had inflows of about $370 million. Tax-exempt funds had inflows of about $576 million, while money market funds saw outflows of about $3.2 billion.

U.S. equity markets continued to see-saw as the initial optimism over the central bank announcements quickly lost momentum. For the week ended Wednesday all of the major U.S. indices were in the red by more than a percentage point, with the technology sector taking the brunt of the losses; the NASDAQ ended the period down 2.7%. Surprisingly, the dip in the markets did not seem to have a large impact on fund investors. Looking at the corresponding flows for the week, mutual funds and ETFs reported net inflows of $3.7 billion, with investors continuing to place the majority of new cash into taxable bond products (+$2.3 billion). The equity group was once again mixed; stock mutual funds posted net outflows of $1.1 billion, while their ETF counterparts continued to garner assets of $2.1 billion net. Interest in municipal debt funds jumped as investors injected $915 million into the group—their largest weekly net inflow since mid-August. Money market fund flows were relatively flat, ending the week with net redemptions of $506 million.

Jeff Tjornehoj talks about his observations on mutual fund and ETF flows.

With the dog days of summer upon us many investors focused their attention away from the anemic markets and towards the potential fallout of both hurricane Isaac and the Republican National Convention. But despite this there was some optimistic data released on the current state of the economy. July GDP was revised upwards to 1.7%, home prices continued to strengthen, and consumer spending increased for the first time in three months. Combined with relatively quite news overseas and anticipated action from the Fed, investors injected $5.8 billion into mutual funds and ETFs—excluding money markets.

Despite a positive movement in the markets equity mutual funds and ETFs reported net redemptions of $4.1 billion, continuing their roller coaster ride over the past eight weeks. Once again SPDR S&P 500 (SPY) had a heavy influence over the aggregate numbers pushing out roughly $3.9 billion of the total. Equity mutual funds were able to eke out a net inflow of $133 million and although relatively flat it was a large improvement over the roughly $5 billion in net redemptions experienced over the previous two weeks. Taxable bond funds posted their fifth consecutive week of inflows at $5.2 billion as investors continued to allocate cash to both corporate investment grade (+$1.6 billion) and high yield (+$809 million) products. Municipal bond funds also ended the period strongly with net inflows of $1.1 billion—the group’s seventeenth week of consecutive inflows. Money markets ended the week with net sales of $11.9 billion.

Despite an upward correction towards the end of the week, investors were once again on their heels as lackluster unemployment data and a downward revision of Q1 GDP put the pace of the U.S. recovery in question. News from overseas continued to deteriorate as all eyes were on Spanish banks after their treasury minister warned they may soon be shut out of the market. Overall, investors felt comfortable as net sellers, pulling roughly $8.0 billion from U.S. mutual funds and ETFs.

Carsten Lootze, Community Editor -- Trading Structured Products, Thomson Reuters and Detlef Glow, Head of EMEA Reseach, Lipper are discussing the developments in the European ETF industry during the first five month of 2012

Matthew Lemieux reviews Lipper's U.S. weekly fund flows for the week ended May 16, 2012. U.S. markets continued to reel as Eurozone concerns were once again at the forefront of investors’ minds. Paired with natural May selling pressures equity investors continued to be net redeemers for the week ending May 16, 2012. Despite $2.6 billion in net outflows from equity mutual funds and ETFs, investors continued to allocate cash to fixed income products and kept overall fund flows—ex-money markets—in the positive at $1.3 billion.

Matthew Lemieux reviews Lipper's U.S. weekly fund flows for the week ended May 2, 2012. With generally negative economic news hitting the wire, it was quite surprising equity markets fared as well as they did. The tone was set in the U.S. with a lower than expected Q1 GDP result of 2.2%. That paired with the downgrade of Spanish debt and an increasing number of Eurozone countries falling into recession seemed to set the stage for redemptions in the fund space. Surprisingly, like the markets themselves, mutual funds—excluding money market products—kept investor’s interest as they reported net inflows of $2.9 billion for the week.

Lipper's Jeff Tjornehoj discusses the week's flows trends and surprises.

Matthew Lemieux reviews preliminary mutual fund flow numbers for the fourth quarter 2011 in this WebEx replay.

Jeff Tjornehoj discusses the flows into and out of the funds industry this week.

Head of Lipper Americas Research Jeff Tjornehoj discusses which strategies have fared well--and those that have not--since the downgrade of U.S. government debt.

Jeff Tjornehoj discusses the weekly flows data among mutual funds and highlights top changes in the ETF market.

Jeff Tjornehoj recaps the events and crunches the numbers behind the flow of funds into and out of the conventional mutual funds industry. Top flows for ETFs are also highlighted.

Plain vanilla Euro Stoxx 50 ETFs play a dominate role in the European ETF market, as they are one of largest peer groups by assets under management. For this reason, Lipper analyzed this segment of the European ETF market and will publish a research study on September 16th. Within this 20 minutes presentation we will give an unique overview on the Euro Stoxx 50 ETFs, which are available to investors in Europe. We will present results of our analysis on: - Development of the assets under management (AUM), - Fees and expenses, - Relative performance, - Correlation, - Tracking error, - On-exchange turnover and - Spreads

Detlef Glow, Lipper’s Head of Central, North and Eastern European Research, provides an overview of the pan-European ETF market for first quarter 2010.