As the mutual fund trading scandals widened in October, equity funds on the whole had their biggest month of inflows since March 2002, according to the monthly estimate released Tuesday by AMG Data Services (see MME 10/27/03). Investors added a net $24.5 billion of assets to stock mutual funds last month, up from $17.3 billion in September, the scandals' first month.
Both Bank of America's Nations Funds and Bank One's One Group of Funds had net inflows. Robert Adler, president of AMG Data Services, attributed this to the companies "standing up, taking responsibility for their actions, and immediately dealing with the issues."
But October was difficult for Janus, which was hit with $1.6 billion of outflows, actually an improvement from the $2.5 billion of September outflows, according to AMG. Strong had $136 million of outflows, up from $90 million in September. And Putnam Investments had net equity fund outflows of $636 million in October. In the first week of November alone, Putnam bled $14 billion.
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