Investors sent a net $6.2 billion into mutual funds and exchange-traded funds that hold US stocks last week, ending a two-week retreat from the domestic stock market, according to data released Wednesday by the Investment Company Institute. The move back into the US stock market came amid a rally that has sent the benchmark S&P 500 up by nearly 16 percent since the start of the year, thanks in part to the US Federal Reserve's unexpected decision to pause its series of interest rate hikes.
Despite that rally, investors have pulled a net of approximately $11.4 billion out of US stock funds over the 14 full weeks of the year, according to ICI data.
World stock funds, meanwhile, lost a net $400 million, continuing an eight-week losing streak. For the year-to-date, world stock funds have pulled in approximately net $3.8 billion. Bond funds brought in about net $7.8 billion last week, continuing a streak of positive inflows over every full week of the year to date.
The outsized inflows into bond funds at the expense of equity funds at a time when the economy is strengthening could soon lead to a reversal as investors increase their appetite for riskier assets, BlackRock chief executive Larry Fink told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday.
"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.
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