Retail cash flows to U.S. high-yield funds were a positive $489 million in the week ended Oct. 9, with merely 18% tied to inflows to the exchange-traded funds segment, according to Lipper, a division of Thomson Reuters. That’s an expansion on the inflow of $238 million over the prior week, and it extends the inflow streak to five weeks with $5.8 billion of inflows over that span.

The four-week-trailing average holds steady, at $1.3 billion per week. Recall that the four-week-trailing measurement was in the red for much of August and the first week of September.

The year-to-date figure takes a big step towards the middle line of net-zero-flow, with net outflows of just $1.8 billion based on $1.9 billion of withdrawals from mutual funds against a $120 million inflow to ETFs. Note that 2012’s year-to-date reading at this time was for inflows of $23.3 billion, with 38% tied to ETF-directed cash flow.

Net assets of the weekly reporter sample totaled $165.5 billion at the end of the observation period, with ETFs representing roughly 20% of the total, at $33.2 billion. Net assets are up $3.5 billion in the year to date, which is a gain of about 2% for the year.

The change due to market conditions was positive $408 million over the observation period, or roughly a gain of nil against the size of the assets. The change due to market conditions in the year to date is positive $8.5 billion, which is a gain of roughly 5% in the year to date, according to Lipper. – Matt Fuller