Equity funds saw outflows of $9.4 billion for the week of Jan. 4, 2012, according to numbers released by the Investment Company Institute.

That’s significantly higher than the outflow of $5.1 billion from the previous week. In fact, the most recent number accelerates the trend that has seen equity funds lose $3.2 trillion since the first week of December.

Going back even further, the ICI’s numbers are reported in monthly increments and the last time equity fund flows were in the black was in April 2011.

For the recent time period, hybrid funds, which can invest in stocks and fixed-income, and bond funds were the beneficiaries of the equity outflows. Hybrids had estimated inflows of $457 million for the week while bond funds had estimated inflows of $3.31 billion.

For all of last year, investors pulled more than $125 billion out of mutual funds that invest long-term in stocks last year.

For the year, only about $32.2 billion was added to mutual funds of all types, using ICI historical data.

That was the worst performance since 2008, the year that collapse of the subprime mortgage market led to a global credit crisis and the “breaking of the buck” in money market mutual funds.

Lee Conrad writes for Bank Investment Consultant.

ûAs Group Managing Editor of SourceMedia's Investment Advisor Group, Lee oversees all editorial aspects of our Bank Investment Consultant brand. He has spent half his 20-year journalism career at SourceMedia and legacy companies. Before taking over BIC in April 2011, he spent more than three years as managing editor of On Wall Street. And before that he was a senior editor at U.S. Banker magazine for four years. He also worked as an editor in the newsletter unit of legacy divisions of the company for three years, covering various aspects of the fixed-income markets.