There was a net $111 million retail cash outflow from U.S. high-yield bond funds for the week ended May 27, according to Lipper. It dents the $907 million infusion last week, and today’s outflow is the fifth withdrawal over the past six weeks.
However, take note it’s more than all related to the fast-money, market-timing, and market-hedging influence of the exchange-traded-fund segment. Indeed, this past week’s figures reflect an inflow of $41 million to mutual funds overwhelmed by an outflow of $152 million from ETFs.
Regardless of what that suggests about investor intent, it’s an outflow, but the trailing four-week average nonetheless moderates. The current observation is negative $510 million per week, the least in five weeks, from negative $697 million last week and negative $964 million two weeks ago. Recall that the latter was the largest in this measure over 16 weeks at the time.
The inflow modestly draws down the full-year reading to inflows of $8.4 billion, with 35% ETF-related. Last year, after the first 21 weeks, there was a net $4.7 billion inflow, with 16% related to ETFs.
The change due to market conditions this past week was positive $275 million, the most in six weeks. Still, it’s essentially nil, at just 0.1%, against total assets, which were $208.8 billion at the end of the observation period. ETFs account for $40.6 billion of total assets, or roughly 19% of the sum. – Matt Fuller