Split Decision on Mutual Fund Flows

Data from fund flow tracking firms were substantially split for the week ending June 23.

According to TrimTabs, investors continued to stream into stock funds -- especially aggressive growth funds -- as equity funds had inflows of $2.5 billion for the week ending June 23, up from $1.7 billion during the prior week.

However, AMG Data, a rival fund flow tracking firm, reported outflows of $800 million.

Both AMG and TrimTabs reported international equity funds with inflows of $400 million, compared with slight outflows the prior week.

The firms use different methodologies for tracking fund flows and would not comment on the difference between the results. AMG collects data from over 500 sources on 16,900 open-end mutual funds valued at $6.3 trillion. TrimTabs surveys over 1,000 equity and bond funds daily, representing 14% and 10%, respectively, of the Investment Company Institute's universe to forecast fund flows.

"June has seen moderate equity inflows, at $5 billion month to date," says Carl Wittnebert, TrimTabs director of research. "But Aggressive Growth funds, which concentrate on technology stocks, are headed toward their second largest outflow in 15 months," he added. "The largest was in May."

Domestic equity funds had inflows of $2.1 billion, compared with inflows of $1.7 billion the prior week according to TrimTabs.

TrimTabs reported bond funds had outflows of $1.5 billion, a slight increase from last week's outflows of $1.3 billion. Hybrid funds had inflows of $400 million, compared with inflows of $200 million the prior week.

AMG reported slightly lower taxable bond flow redemptions at $915 million, with government and corporate bond fund outflows of $792 million and $297 million, respectively.

High yield corporate bond funds saw outflows of $70 million, the 10th week of outflows in the past 11 weeks, while municipal bond funds reported outflows totaling $564 million, according to AMG.

Money market funds reported inflows of $4.1 billion, reported AMG.