The last thing is that retail fund flows have a good track record of being ill-timed.
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Mutual fund flows indicate that the majority of the money is still flowing into bonds, not stocks.
Pension funds, 401(k) plans and other institutional investors are typically the largest contributors to daily stock fund flows.
According to BCA Research, mutual fund flows reflect that retail investors still prefer lower yielding corporate and government bonds over equities.
And the economic fund flows within partnerships often require armies of accountants.
Another factor that influences the municipal bond market is mutual fund flows.
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Fund flows from money markets in December and January (and most likely in February as well) into equities that have steadily gained steam.
This may perhaps foretell an exodus from equities as fund flows and other data suggest started in the later part of the second quarter.
According to the May 2010 Morningstar Direct Fund Flows Update, investors continue to draw money out of money market funds at a record pace.
Because analysts have been looking at the balance of fund flows, outbound hot money could be a lot larger than most estimates put it.
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Market participants are also keeping an eye on exchange-traded fund flows.
Jonathan Garner of Morgan Stanley says that recent fund flows into emerging markets represent a re-allocation of just three-hundredths of one percentage point of global wealth.
Because the star performers tend to be fairly specialised, covering areas like China, property or Latin America, they are never likely to receive the biggest fund flows.
On the side of the bulls is the fact that stocks are not particularly expensive and they are completely unloved when viewed through the prism of fund flows.
Such an overly simplistic conclusion implies that Treasuries exist in a vacuum, without taking into consideration fund flows between asset classes and between instruments of different credit quality.
In fact, per Strategas, from March 2009 through July 2011, mutual fund flows reflect that the average investor has been a net seller of stocks despite a near 100 percent market rally during the time period.
Since then, significant fund flows to emerging markets have been recorded, as investors believe Japanese retail investors are keen to buy assets abroad to diversify from assets at home that are linked to the weakening yen.
The week ending February 27 saw EPFR global-tracked bond funds outpace equity fund flows by the biggest margin in 14 weeks as retail investors pulled money out of the latter for the first time this year.
However, the correlation between flows into hard-currency bond funds and both local-currency bond funds and equity funds has decreased significantly lately, while the correlation between EM equity fund flows and EM local-currency bond fund flows has trended higher.
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Fidelity Investments and American Funds, among the largest in the category, saw redemptions or weak investor interest compared with competitors, according to an analysis of mutual-fund flows done for The Wall Street Journal by research firm Strategic Insight, a unit of New York-based Asset International.
Multiple studies measuring mutual fund cash flows prove that advisors have no skill in timing investments and there is no evidence they are getting better at it.
Year-to-date flows into this fund group climbed to 40 percent of the full year total for 2012.
For the month of January, flows into this fund group climbed by 40 percent over the full year total for 2012.
As for retail flows, loan fund managers say that as long as the risk-on trade persists, they will get their share of new dollars.
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Flows out of the fund are likely to have been even higher Monday, traders said, after volume in the SPDR fund surged to an all-time high.
Some are already timidly criticizing the International Monetary Fund, the speculators, the capital flows across borders, the right of the self-appointed market forces to discipline elected governments.
As the standard bearer for 3 million American businesses, will the Chamber get behind a hike in the gas tax (which flows into the Highway Trust Fund)?
In a world dominated by unknown and unmanageable cash flows on a daily basis the fund manager must make many trades to exactly replicate the index.
He said the bank was working closely with the International Monetary Fund and others to enhance capacity and better track flows, with staff collecting daily reports from all local banks.
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