ICI's Antoniewicz on Fund Flows
ICI recently posted a video on "2019 Fund Investment Trends." They explain, "The latest data show money market funds and bond funds are drawing strong investor interest, while equity funds are experiencing outflows. In the October 25, 2019, edition of Focus on Funds, ICI Senior Director of Industry and Financial Analysis Shelly Antoniewicz offers a quick breakdown of the trends and what's behind them." Antoniewicz comments, "We're actually on about the same pace as where we were at this point in 2018 -- so not much difference there in terms of the aggregate amount of flows coming in." When asked about equities, she says, "The US stock market being up almost 18 percent year-to-date, we've actually had very modest outflows from domestic stock funds this year. And that has also bled over into US investors' desire to invest in foreign or international funds as well. So we've seen outflows from international funds so far this year." On bond funds, Antoniewicz tells us, "We have extremely strong inflows into bond funds, but I don't know if that's related to what is occurring in the equity market at all. We have had sustained inflows into bond funds for the last 10 years, and we do believe that is primarily being driven by the demographics in the US." Finally, when asked about money market funds, Antoniewicz explains, "And that is where a lot of money is going. So we’ve had over $300 billion come in to money market funds so far this year -- equity investors, they might be looking at the equity market and saying, 'You know what, I just want to take a little pause and see how the global outlook's going to, you know, shake out here.' And they're putting more money into money market funds. We see it on the institutional side as well as on the retail side."
