Monthly Fund Flows – Stock vs. Bond Flows

Bianco Research  •  Newsclips  •  October 5, 2022

The Investment Company Institute recently released its data on mutual fund and ETF flows through August 2022.

In past years we highlighted the world’s aging population and its need for low-risk investments, noting that inflows into bond mutual funds and ETFs topped those of stock funds over the past decade. This divergence really began accelerating in the past few years. In fact, since the Fed began quantitative easing in 2009, stocks returned 574% on a total return basis while the U.S. Aggregate Index returned 41%. Despite this discrepancy in returns, bond funds have seen inflows of $3.19 trillion compared to stock funds’ inflows of $500 billion.

 

 

General Overview:

The table below shows the combined flows and assets of the major categories of mutual funds and ETFs.

 

 

The chart below shows the combined flows and assets of all long-term mutual funds and ETFs.

 

 

Long-term funds can be broken down into equity funds, bond funds and hybrid funds. Each is shown below.