Lipper: Investors Continue Chasing World Equity Returns

May 23, 2005 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - Estimated equity fund inflows were $18 billion in April - a $3.5 billion increase over March - but it wasn't spread very far across the equity markets, Lipper reported on Monday.

Lipper Senior Research Analyst Andrew Clark said in a monthly research report that the asset advance was entirely in the world equity fund arena, with domestic and mixed equity funds actually seeing small declines.

Lipper said world equity inflows were $11.3 billion in April – up from $7 billion in March. The world equity funds benefited from a 16-month habit of investors chasing higher returns overseas, Clark asserted in the report. However, the analyst pointed out that multi-cap global and international funds were the biggest world equity winners as investors tried to hedge their bets by not relying too heavily on a particular capitalization level.

Lipper said domestic equity offerings saw a month-over-month decline from March’s $2.5 billion advance to a $2.2 billion increase in April, while mixed-equity funds likewise saw March’s $5 billion advance slip to a $4.5 billion increase in April.

Drilling down further in the equity fund arena, Lipper reported that S&P 500 Index funds enjoyed a $1.2-billion advance.  Among world equity offerings, global funds were ahead $3.1 billion, international by $8.8 billion and Asian funds were flat.

According to the Lipper data, bond funds had a small April outflow of $0.1 billion with taxable bond funds showing a $1.3 billion advance, while tax exempt funds had $1.4-billion outflows. The biggest fixed-income loser over the month were high-yield offerings which suffered outflows of $2.4 billion.

To obtain a copy of the report, go to http://www.research.lipper.wallst.com/researchseries/fundFlowsOverview.asp .

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