Global equity funds suck in $15 billion in Brexit, trade truce week: BofA

[December 20, 2019]   LONDON (Reuters) - Global equity funds attracted $14.8 billion last week, Bank of America Global said on Friday, as investors stormed back to risky assets after U.S.-China agreed on a trade truce and a clear majority in the UK election cleared Brexit fog.

 Passersby are reflected on an electronic board showing the exchange rates between the Japanese yen and the U.S. dollar, the yen against the euro, the yen against the Australian dollar, Dow Jones Industrial Average and other market indices outside a brokerage in Tokyo, Japan, August 6, 2019. REUTERS/Issei Kato

UK equity funds sucked in $1.1 billion in the week to Wednesday as Boris Johnson's thumping victory led to hopes that Britain would exit the European Union with a deal next year. British mid-cap stocks index FTSE 250 <.FTMC> soared to record highs last Friday.

Investors said the scale of Johnson's victory may be enough to draw back billions of pounds of investment that have sidestepped UK stocks for years.

However, fears that the UK PM will take a hard line on trade talks with the EU has dented gains in the pound and UK stocks.

BofA said investors redeemed $29.8 billion since the Brexit referendum until September 2019. From that date $5.7 billion have made their way back to the country.

Meanwhile in the U.S., trade truce with China and Fed's pause on interest rate hikes lured investors back to value stocks with U.S. equity value funds pulling in $10.2 billion.

(Reporting by Thyagaraju Adinarayan)

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