Sandy Wreaks Havoc on Fund Flows

Perhaps Matthew Lemieux, research analyst at Lipper, sums up best the damage Superstorm Sandy has wrought on the mutual fund and ETF space.

"To say we had a wild ending for October would be a gross understatement as the East Coast of the U.S. prepared for and endured one of the most powerful storms in that area’s history," he writes.

Indeed, according to latest U.S. fund flow data from Lipper, investors in mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (excluding money market funds) posted net outflows of $754 million during the three trading days of this last week, despite efforts to get operations back up and running again before month-end.

In equity, mutual investors pulled roughly $1.4 billion from their accounts, with the majority of assets leaving diversified equity products, Lipper data showed. Interestingly, stock ETFs broke a two-week losing streak with net inflows of $1.3 billion, despite equity markets posting their first monthly loss since May. Combined with ETFs, the equity asset group ended the period with net outflows of $37 million, Lemieux reported.

Money market mutual fund assets also decreased by $22.71 billion to $2.55 trillion for the week ended Oct. 31, the Investment Company Institute reported. Assets of retail money market funds increased by $660 mllion to $885 billion, while assets of institutional money market funds decreased by $23.4 billion to $1.66 trillion. Lipper attributed outflows to quarter-end tax deadlines.

Taxable bond funds posted their first net outflow in 17 weeks, while municipals reported net redemptions of $123 million, the first outflow in 28 weeks, Lemiux reported for Lipper. But corporate investment-grade products were able to attract net inflows of $291 million, he said.

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