Overall, mutual funds and ETFs reported net inflows of $3.2 billion for the week with equity products garnering $10.3 billion—their largest weekly gain since September 14, 2011, according to fund flow data for the week ending July 3, providing by Lipper.
Municipal Bond funds posted their twelfth consecutive week of inflows at $317 million while Money Market products pushed $7.4 billion out their doors.
Unfortunately, according to Lipper analyst Matthew Lemieux, this action did not seem to be a broad indicator of market sentiment as roughly $7.0 billion was solely attributed to what seems to be large institutional moves into the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY).
Taxable Bond funds ended the period with net outflows of just $100 million.
Although fixed income mutual funds (+$1.3 billion) continued to keep investors attention, their ETF counterparts suffered net redemptions of $1.4 billion with investors moving out of shorter term treasury products—a possible side effect of both the continuation of Operation Twist as well as initial reports of positive moves toward new policies in the Eurozone.
Despite the ever increasing concern over global economic conditions, investors closed the quarter out strongly with all major U.S. equity indices ending June with monthly returns well over 3.5%.
“With results like this, one would think the general sentiment in the market may be shifting back towards risk but in reality most of the upward movements have been based on vapor volume as many investors continue to seem comfortable on the sidelines,” Lemieux wrote.
