August Saw Equity Outflows, Bond Inflows: Report

Among the highlights in the Financial Research Corporation report:

• intermediate-term government bond funds lead the way during the month among the top 20 fund categories with $3.28 billion in net inflows ($18.24 billion year to date)
• The Vanguard Group ($472 billion) and Fidelity Investments ($469 billion) topped the fund group list in terms of assets
• American Funds did the best among the fund groups during the month in terms of monthly net inflows at $3.2 billion while Vanguard followed at $2.6 billion. Measured year to date, Vanguard was back on top with $31.5 billion net inflow while American followed closely with $29.4 billion.
• The PIMCO Total Return fund bested its peers among monthly net flows with just over $1 billion and hung onto the top spot with a $10.2 billion year-to-date net inflow showing.

Categories

Fund categories also performing well in August as measured by net flows included intermediate term bond ($2.86 billion), short-term bond ($1.5 billion), short-term government ($1.4 billion), and high-yield bond ($1.31 billion).

Fund Groups

Behind Vanguard and Fidelity in the asset race were American Funds ($319 billion), Franklin Distributors Inc. ($150 billion), and Putnam Investments ($141 billion). Measured by monthly net flows, Nations Funds ($1.82 billion) followed American Funds and Vanguard. Next were PIMCO Funds ($1.79 billion) and Fidelity ($1.54 billion).