Lipper Fund Flows: $857 Million Exits Equity Fund Doors

The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained about 1.15% this past week, which wasn’t enough to turn on equity mutual fund investors; they pulled $857 million net for the flows week ended April 8, 2015.

The favorite equity fund classifications for the week tended to be those focused on overseas strategies, such as International Multi-Cap Core Funds (+$570 million) and Emerging Markets Funds (+$451 million); Large-Cap Growth Funds continued to bear the brunt of the selling with a net outflow of $559 million. Institutional investors also shied away from equities; they put just $156 million into exchange-traded funds (ETFs). The latest week’s biggest ETF individual recipients were Deutsche MSCI EAFE (DBEF, +$1.0 billion) and Select Sector SPDR Energy (XLE, +$518 million), while investors pared back their ownership of SPDR S&P 500 (SPY, -$4.5 billion).

Taxable bond mutual fund investors added money to their accounts for the fourteenth week in a row; that group of funds saw net inflows of $432 million for the lightest week of inflows this year. Investors pumped cash mostly into Lipper’s Core Plus Bond Funds and High Yield Funds classifications. Mutual funds in the Core Plus group led the parade with net inflows of $1.0 billion. Investors had doubts about Loan Participation Funds (-$111 million) and Short Investment Grade Debt Funds (-$1.3 billion).

The week’s top individual destination for bond ETF investors was iShares iBoxx $HY Corporate (HYG), with inflows of $345 million; the benchmark Barclays U.S. Aggregate index was flat for the week. Municipal bond mutual fund investors pulled $130 million from their accounts for the second consecutive week of net outflows. Money market funds saw net outflows of $5.4 billion, of which institutional investors pulled $6.0 billion and retail investors added $546 million.

For more information on this week’s Lipper fund flows data, please refer to Lipper’s U.S. Fund Flows website or this video.