U.S. high-yield funds recorded a net outflow of $41 million in the week ended Feb. 3, denting the inflow of $883 million last week and marking the fourth net one-week outflow over the past five weeks.
The modest net-negative reading was mixed, however, with outflows of $108 million filled partially back in by ETF inflows of $67 million. The same dynamic occurred last week, but ETFs overpowered the mutual fund outflows by 175%, versus this past week’s inverse 64%.
Regardless of what that might say about market-timing, hedging, and fast-money activity, it’s a small net outflow that helps draws down the trailing-four-week average to negative $827 million per week, from negative $1 billion per week last week and negative $1.2 billion two weeks ago. Recall that prior to the December outflow streak, the trailing-four-week observation was positive $231 million in mid-November.
The year-to-date outflow total is now $4.1 billion, with 27% related to the ETF segment. The full-year 2015 reading was deeply in the red, at negative $7.1 billion. The full-year reading was negative $7.7 billion for mutual funds against positive $686 million for ETFs, for a roughly 10% inverse reading.
Alongside this past week’s outflow and negative momentum in the secondary market, the change due to market conditions over the past week was negative $83 million. This is the smallest reading in either direction in 35 weeks, but it’s essentially nil against total assets, which were $170.4 billion at the end of the observation period.
At present, the ETF segment accounts for $32.8 billion of total assets, or roughly 19% of the sum. — Matt Fuller