Investors Skittish Over ETFs

Mutual funds and exchange-traded funds, excluding money market funds, recorded net inflows of $4.5 billion for the week ended March 27, according to Lipper. Overall, equity funds contributed $740 million in net sales bringing their 2013 total to $75.2 billion.

Mutual funds ended the week with net inflows of $2.3 billion—$640 million domestic, $1.6 billion nondomestic. Taxable bond funds also reported their twelfth straight week of net sales; they added approximately $3.8 billion to their accounts. “Investors continued to show preference for bank loan products (+$1.3 billion), bringing the YTD total for the floating-rate bond group to $15.2 billion and surpassing its $12.2 billion total for all of 2012,” according to Matthew Lemieux of Lipper.

“Some investors did vie for safety; Treasury-based ETFs added $810 million for the week—for their strongest showing since the beginning of November 2012. Municipal bond funds continued to report net outflows (-$43 million) for a fourth consecutive week; investors have been showing concern about looming budget cuts and municipal pension obligations. Money market funds added $889 million net, despite the $2.8 billion in net outflows for retail investors.”

On the flips side, Lemieux noted that ETF investors redeemed some $1.5 billion net from their accounts; SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY), with net outflows of $3.0 billion, dragged the broader group into the red. “It was the second consecutive week of net outflows for ETFs as investors also showed caution about emerging-market equity products (-$1.5 billion).”

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