The Song Remains the Same: Money Is Leaving Stock Funds

Lipper's February outflow figures were wrong, but, oddly, the outflow story remains the same: Billions gushed out of sagging growth funds.

On Wednesday we told you there was a big difference of opinion regarding how much fund investors' redemptions outpaced their investments in stock funds last month. The tally at fund-tracking shop Lipper was a record $11.4 billion. But New York fund consultancy Strategic Insight crunched the numbers and came up with about a $1 billion. Well, let's just say that the folks at Strategic Insight are probably feeling a little cocky today.

Last night Lipper emailed reporters a correction. The outflows from equity-income funds were overstated by $9 billion, reducing the firm's total February stock-fund outflow estimate to $2.4 billion, much closer to Strategic Insight's estimate. Final figures won't be available until next week when the Investment Company Institute, the fund industry's largest trade group, releases its numbers.

The error is no doubt embarrassing for Lipper, not to mention The Wall Street Journal, which ran with Lipper's numbers and ignored Strategic Insight's, triggering a correction in today's paper. But the most compelling theme beneath the data is still true: Investors did pull money out of sagging, tech-heavy growth funds and stuff it into more price-conscious value funds.

The flow of money from growth funds is underscored in both Lipper and Strategic Insight's data. Lipper's growth-fund estimate wasn't changed in the correction. By its count February growth-fund outflows totaled $4.2 billion, while Strategic Insight estimates the outflow at $5 billion. The two firms estimate that value funds took in $7.6 billion and $6 billion, respectively.

If growth funds, down more than 35% over the last year according to Morningstar, keep losing money they could weigh down the already battered technology sectors as fund managers sell stock to cash out their investors. This type of vicious cycle hurt value funds when they fell from favor in 1998 and 1999, and could play out on the growth side in coming months.