Asset class view Total funds flows for the month were £13.97bn (£4.98bn, ex-money market funds). MFFs took most, at £8.99bn, the largest net flows for the asset class since December 2023.   Active v passive Long-term passive vehicles netted £5.84bn while their active equivalent saw outflows of £861m.. Passive mutual funds saw inflows of £6.24bn, while ETFs suffered outflows of £433m..   Classifications Some £1.92bn flooded into Equity UK funds, with £1.26bn of this going into passive vehicles. The largest outflows for the month were from Bond GBP Corporates, shedding £2.23bn.   Sustainable fund flows Total sustainable fund flows ex

Lipper’s head of UK research, Dewi John, reviews the main trends in conventional and sustainable funds, in the context of the economic backdrop. Source for FTSE Russell data: FTSE Russell Global Investment Research, Performance Insights, August 2024

Asset class view Bonds netted £2.27bn, down from the £3.58bn flows for April, although they were still the most popular asset class. Equity funds rebounded with £153m of net sales. Active v passive Passive bond funds took £3.8bn, as their active peers lost £1.53bn. Contrarywise, active equity funds attracted £487m as their passive counterparts saw redemptions of £334m. Classifications Equity Global was the largest money taker, at £2.79bn, as active funds took the majority (£1.67bn). Equity UK saw the highest outflows (-£3.12bn), double that of the next on the table, Money Market GBP (-£1.55bn). Sustainable fund flows Reversing their recent

The IA Flexible Investment sector’s outperformance relative to other mixed investment classifications is linked to a systematically higher equity exposure. Mixed investment funds offer a one-stop-shop, managing your portfolio asset allocation within one fund. The Investment Association sectors provides four such sectors, each defined by their equity allocation. More equities mean more risk, and potentially more return. Flexible Investments Funds are (in theory, at least) the go-anywhere fourth sector: managers can dial their equity exposure up to 100% or down to zero. This maximises opportunity. But then, of course, it also maximises the risk if you call the market wrong.

Having largely given up on organic intelligence, investors have got all excited over its artificial offspring. As a result, the (mainly US) stocks linked to AI have raced away from the broad market this year. I’m unsure as to whether those same investors have not seen the Terminator franchise, or having done so, rather like the idea of the future it portrays. But who am I to argue? What is clear, however, is the narrow base of this rally. My colleague at Starmine, Tajinder Dhillon, did an elegant analyses of this recently, which is summarised below. Top-heavy returns By the

While money market funds saw the largest inflows, this was equalled by the combined flows to risk assets. Asset Class View Money market funds saw the greatest inflows (£3.4bn), the first time this asset class has been in positive territory since the surge last October. Equity funds took almost £2bn—the first time in the black this year. Active v Passive Long-term active funds took £745m, while their passive equivalents netted £2.7bn. ETFs attracted £651m, largely to fixed income, while passive mutual funds saw inflows of £2.7bn, mainly equity. Classifications The top money-taking classifications in March were Money Market GBP (£3.4bn),

  Asset Class View October saw the largest UK fund inflows on record of £41.1bn. However, this was due to £66.6bn inflows to money market funds, with all other asset classes in redemption mode. Alternative, bond, equity and mixed asset funds all suffered redemptions in excess of £5bn, with bonds seeing the largest outflows of £7.9bn. Active v Passive Excluding money market funds, active funds saw total outflows of £19.5bn, while passives lost £6bn. Despite huge redemptions for the asset class overall, bond ETFs attracted more than £1bn for the month. Classifications Unsurprisingly, Money Market GBP was the classification with

UK equities are still deeply unloved—indeed, they are becoming more so.   Global outflows from Equity UK, Equity UK Income and Equity UK Small & Mid Cap funds for the first half of the year were £11.3bn. Lest we ascribe this to the effects of the bear market conditions hammering global equities this year, Equity Global funds have taking in £31.3bn over the same period.   Pariah Asset Class UK equities have been a pariah asset class for years. UK equity funds have only seen five years of net inflows in the past 15 years. In 2018, the influential global

Refinitiv Lipper head of research for UK & Ireland discusses what fund flows say about UK investor sentiment

There are signs that the rotation in market leadership is reversing any ‘ESG premium’—though not uniformly. Despite this, flows to ESG funds remain strong. Dewi John uses Refinitiv Lipper data to lift the lid on the UK sustainable fund market.   The strong revival of energy stocks and value is seeing an erosion of the “ESG premium” in certain top-selling sectors, as conventional Equity Global funds outperform their ESG peers over 12 months to the end of the first quarter.   Chart 1: ESG Top-Selling Classification Performance versus Conventional Equivalents, Q1 2022 (Percentage Growth) Source: Refinitiv Lipper   Chart 1

2021 UK Fund Flows Review: Summary Download the full report, to the right   Global growth rebounded to 5.5% for 2021, although the ongoing pandemic continued to act as a drag. The first lockdown of 2021 was introduced in early January, easing progressively from March to July. Delta appeared in the UK in April and was the dominant COVID variant by May. Omicron hit in December, showing we were not yet out of the woods. It’s never going to be a year we remember fondly. As for financial markets, the FTSE 100 started the year at 6,461 and finished at

Equity, bond, and mixed-assets fund flows are all positive, with the biggest losses coming from money market vehicles.   Asset Class View Investors funded allocations to equities (£4.34bn), mixed-assets (£2.3bn), and bond funds (£1.75bn), with net outflows from money market funds (-£7.21bn), Active v Passive Passive funds took the most bond cash, and more than half of equity flows (£2.55bn). Nevertheless, April was a better month for active managers, moving into positive territory from March’s negative flows. Equity ETFs netted just £137m out of a total of £4.26bn for passive equity. Bond ETFs did rather better, with £452m of the