Long-Term Funds Lose Billions in July

In fact, so-called long-term funds—basically anything other than money market funds—had a net outflow of $26.04 billion in July, compared with a modest inflow of $436 million in June (see Mutual Fund Assets Drop 5% in June), according to the Investment Company Institute (ICI).

Most of that came from stock funds, which posted an outflow of $26.36 billion in July, compared with an outflow of $4.82 billion in June. Among stock funds, world equity funds (US funds that invest primarily overseas) —which have in many months continued to attract new money even when domestic funds didn’t—posted an outflow of $7.67 billion in July, well ahead of June’s outflow of $1.20 billion. Funds that invest primarily in the US had an outflow of $18.69 billion in July, also well up from the $3.63 billion outflow

Hybrid funds posted an outflow of $1.47 billion in July, compared with an inflow of $697 million in June.

Exception Move

Bond funds was the exception to the month’s trend—but the $1.79 billion July inflow was well off the $4.56 billion pace in June.

As for where all that money was flowing to, money market funds enjoyed an inflow of $79.44 billion in July, more than reversing June’s $75.89 billion outflow. Funds offered primarily to institutions had an inflow of $56.38 billion, with the remaining $23.06 billion attributable to funds offered primarily to individuals.

Taxable bond funds had an outflow of $689 million in July, vs. an inflow of $1.94 billion in June, and municipal bond funds had an inflow of $2.48 billion in July, compared with an inflow of $2.62 billion in June.

The full data from ICI is available here.