|
Investors piled into U.S. stock markets in the wake of Donald
Trump's election as U.S. president in November, betting that his
campaign pledges to cut taxes and boost spending would fuel
growth and inflation.
Wall Street <.SPX> rallied to record highs in the first quarter
but took a dive after Trump failed to push a key healthcare
reform bill through Congress, raising doubts about the rest of
his program.
On Friday, BAML data tracking investment flows showed a third
straight week of outflows from U.S. equity funds. Europe, Japan
and emerging market equities all attracted net inflows, with the
latter pulling in $2.4 billion.
Emerging market stocks <.MSCIEF> are up 12.8 percent in dollar
terms year-to-date, topping a BAML table of cross-asset winners
and losers. Indian, Mexican and Korean equities were the top
performers, all returning more than 16 percent in dollar terms.
By contrast, U.S. equities have returned 5.8 percent, ranking
just 16th in the BAML league table of equity market performance.
The selling from U.S. equity funds was broad-based, with
investors pulling $10.3 billion from U.S. large caps, $1.7
billion from U.S. value funds, $2 billion from U.S. growth
funds, and $900 million from U.S. small caps.
These outflows dwarfed the inflows into the other equity
segments, so overall, equity funds suffered $7.4 billion of
outflows, the largest in 40 weeks.
Conversely, bond funds attracted $12.4 billion overall, an
eight-week high, with $6.7 billion of inflows to investment
grade bond funds, the largest in eight weeks, and $3.1 billion
for high-yield bond funds, the first inflows in five weeks.
Emerging market debt funds also continued to attract interest
from investors looking for yield, with inflows of $2.2 billion.
(Editing by Louise Ireland)
[© 2017 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2017 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
|
