U.S. stock, bond mutual funds see 4th straight week of withdrawals: Lipper

[December 04, 2015]  By Trevor Hunnicutt

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Investors withdrew $6.6 billion from U.S. stock and taxable-bond mutual funds during the week that ended Dec. 2, Lipper data showed on Thursday, marking the fourth straight week of outflows for those investments.

Overall, stock funds posted $920 million in outflows during the week, led by the mutual fund withdrawals, according to the Lipper data, which also measures exchange-traded funds.

"Retail investors threw the baby out with the bath water," said Tom Roseen, head of research services at Lipper. "People are getting out of the way of a rate hike."

Roseen said concern about the direction of U.S. Federal Reserve policy, mixed economic data and geopolitical concerns have weighed on retail investors.

Those concerns also prompted a flight-to-quality move into money-market funds. That category attracted $17.8 billion during the week, marking the second consecutive week of inflows for the low-risk investments, Lipper said.

Stock ETFs, by contrast, took in $3.8 billion. The SPDR S&P 500 ETF took in about 71 percent of that amount, Lipper said.

"They're saying, we feel comfortable saying there might be a Santa Claus rally here," Roseen said of ETF investors, referring to a potential end-of-year run up in stock prices.

Investors pulled $2.1 billion in cash out of U.S.-listed taxable bond mutual funds and ETFs during the week that ended Dec. 2, Lipper said.

Treasury funds posted $1.3 billion in outflows during the week, while high-yield corporate debt attracted $398 million of inflows and broke a three-week streak of outflows. Higher-credit investment-grade bond funds posted $547 million in outflows.

Emerging-market stock funds extended their streak of outflows to five straight weeks, posting $583 million in withdrawals in the latest period.

The Lipper fund flow data is compiled from reports issued by U.S.-domiciled mutual funds and exchange-traded funds.

The following is a broad breakdown of the flows for the week, including exchange-traded funds (in $ billions):

Sector Flow Chg % Assets Assets Count

($Bil) ($Bil)

All Equity Funds -0.920 -0.02 5,236.782 11,819

Domestic Equities -0.065 -0.00 3,705.334 8,449

Non-Domestic Equities -0.855 -0.06 1,531.448 3,370

All Taxable Bond Funds -2.090 -0.10 2,200.798 6,070

All Money Market Funds 17.811 0.76 2,350.362 1,163

All Municipal Bond Funds 0.364 0.10 355.059 1,504

(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by Jennifer Ablan and Lisa Shumaker)

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