Investors sent net $3.99 bln into U.S. stock mutual funds, ETFs last week -ICI
By Jennifer Ablan NEW YORK, April 24 (Reuters) - Investors sent a net $3.99 billion into mutual funds and exchange-traded funds that hold U.S. stocks last week, marking a second consecutive week of inflows into the domestic stock market, according to data released on Wednesday by the Investment Company Institute.
The move back into the U.S. stock market came amid a rally that has sent the benchmark S&P 500 up by 17% year-to-date. It has been supported by a dovish Federal Reserve, hopes of a U.S.-China trade resolution and largely upbeat earnings.
Despite the rally, investors have favored bond funds, boosted by the Fed's pause on interest-rate hikes this year.
Bond funds, which include taxable and municipal debt funds, brought in a net $8.8 billion last week, continuing a streak of positive inflows over every full week of the year to date.
The outsized inflows into bond funds have come at the expense of equity funds at a time when the economy is strengthening and could soon lead to a reversal as investors increase their appetite for riskier assets, BlackRock chief executive Larry Fink told Reuters in a recent interview .
"We still saw, as an industry and at BlackRock, outflows in equities and this is one of the reasons why I believe the market is getting set up for huge inflows into equities," he said.
Indeed, on Tuesday April 23, the S&P and Nasdaq closed at record levels.
World stock funds, meanwhile, attracted a net $549 million, ending an eighth week losing streak.
The following table shows estimated ICI flows for mutual funds and ETFs (all figures in millions of dollars): 4/17 4/10 4/3 3/27 3/20 Equity 4,542 5,811 -7,496 -11,085 -2,145 Domestic 3,993 6,210 -7,465 -10,896 1,474 World 549 -400 -31 -190 -3,619 Hybrid -976 -122 -3,575 -199 -636 Bond 8,809 7,813 11,275 7,884 10,552 Taxable 7,559 6,675 9,783 5,528 8,660 Munis 1,250 1,138 1,492 2,356 1,892 Commodity -101 -286 -983 141 393 Total 12,273 13,216 -778 -3,259 8,163 (Reporting by Jennifer Ablan Editing by Tom Brown)
