Big Bond Fund Outflows Continue
On Tuesday, the ICI released its latest weekly "Estimated Long-Term Mutual Fund Flows", which says, "Total estimated outflows from long-term mutual funds were $930 million for the five-day period ended Monday, December 23, 2013, the Investment Company Institute reported today. Flow estimates are derived from data collected covering more than 95 percent of industry assets and are adjusted to represent industry totals. Equity funds had estimated inflows of $1.79 billion for the week, compared to estimated inflows of $430 million in the previous week. Domestic equity funds had estimated inflows of $254 million, while estimated inflows to world equity funds were $1.53 billion. Hybrid funds, which can invest in stocks and fixed-income securities, had estimated inflows of $875 million for the week, compared to estimated inflows of $465 million in the previous week. Bond funds had estimated outflows of $3.59 billion, compared to estimated outflows of $8.09 billion during the previous week. Taxable bond funds saw estimated outflows of $2.19 billion, while municipal bond funds had estimated outflows of $1.40 billion." Starting in June 2013, bond funds have had six straight months of outflows through November (losing $151.4 billion) and four straight weeks of outflows in December (down $22.1 billion). Since the start of 2009 and through May of 2013, bond funds accumulated a massive $1.137 trillion of inflows.
