A Boatload Of Money Flowed Into Stocks Again This Week

Investors poured a massive $7.5 billion into equity funds this week.

That brings the total expansion in assets under management at these funds to $178 billion over the past 26 weeks.

Bond funds had a big week too, increasing assets under management by $4.5 billion. Commodity funds suffered $2.1 billion of outflows, while money-market funds took in $16 billion.

Below is a complete breakdown of the flows for the week ended May 22, via BofA Merrill Lynch strategist Michael Hartnett:

Flows by Asset Class

Equities: $7.5bn inflows ($5.7bn via ETFs and $1.8bn into LO)

Bonds: $4.5bn inflows (22 straight weeks)

Precious metals: $1.8bn outflows (15 straight weeks = longest outflow streak on record)

MMF: $16bn inflows (but $125bn outflows YTD)

Flows by Equity Region

$3.0bn into Japan equity funds (following record inflows last week)

$0.4bn outflows from Europe and tiny $10mn outflows from EM

$4.1bn inflows to US (all via ETF's)

By sector, real estate ($1.1bn), financials ($0.5bn) and consumer sectors ($0.7bn) see the biggest inflows

Flows by Fixed Income Sector

$2.5bn into IG bonds (15 straight weeks) and $1.1bn inflows to HY bonds

50 straight weeks of EM debt inflows ($0.9bn)

48 straight weeks of floating-rate debt inflows ($1.2bn)

$1.0bn redemptions from Govt/tsy funds (largest in 19 weeks) and 6 straight weeks out of TIPS

"Euphoric inflows to Japanese equity funds last week was, with hindsight, a big warning sign for Nikkei short-term," says Hartnett.

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