More Equity Fund Outflows in October

Among the October highlights in the FRC report:

• intermediate-term bond funds led the way during the month among the top 20 fund categories with $1.59 billion in net inflows ($30.94 billion year to date)
• the Vanguard Group ($463 billion) and Fidelity Investments ($457 billion) continued to top the fund group list in terms of assets
• American Funds did the best among fund groups during the month in terms of monthly net inflows at $1.8 billion while PIMCO followed at $1.6 billion. Measured year to date, American Funds was on top with $32.9 billion net inflow while PIMCO followed with $24 billion.
• the PIMCO Total Return fund bested its peers among monthly net flows with $1 billion and hung onto the top spot with $12.9 billion year-to-date net inflow showing.

Categories

Fund categories also performing well in October, as measured by net flows, included:

• intermediate-term bond ($1.59 billion)
• high yield bond ($1.52 billion)
• short-term bond ($1.5 billion)
• foreign stock ($1.3 billion)
• short-term government ($1.1 billion).

Fund Groups

Behind Vanguard and Fidelity in the asset race were:

• American Funds ($312 billion),
• Franklin Distributors Inc. ($146 billion)
• Putnam Investments ($134 billion).

Excluded from the report is all data from Money Market funds.

In September, estimated net flows into stock and bond funds totaled $2.3 billion. (See   September Continued Equity Outflows Bond Inflows ).