US Treasury, investment-grade and money funds attract $15bn in risk-aversion week

Investors rushed into their favorite safe-haven assets such as Treasuries, investment-grade corporate bonds and money market funds in the latest week, which was marked by rising tensions over the US-China trade war and global economic slowdown.

US-based money-market funds attracted roughly $10.6 billion in the week ended Wednesday, the second straight week of inflows, according Refinitiv's Lipper.

Stocks plunged on Wednesday in the Dow Jones Industrial Average's worst performance of 2019 - 800.49 points or 3.05% to 25,479.42 after the bond market flashed a worrying signal about the US economy.

"Money went into safe havens, which is what you would expect after yesterday, but this is the continuation of long-term trends," said Pat Keon, senior research analyst at Lipper. Taxable bond funds took in net new money totaling more than $5.8 billion for the 11th week in 12, Keon said. Equity mutual funds extended their losing streak to 26 straight net outflows at negative $4.6 billion, he said.

"Equity ETFs, an asset group where we've seen some week-to-week variation between net inflows and net outflows did the opposite of what you would expect from the markets and had net inflows of $7.7 billion," Keon said. The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust and the Invesco QQQ Trust Series 1 "paved the way here" with net inflows of $5.9 billion and $2.9 billion, respectively, he said.