Morningstar reported estimated U.S. mutual fund and exchange-traded fund asset flows through April 30, 2010. U.S. open-end mutual funds gathered nearly $41.0 billion in assets in April, bringing year-to-date inflows to $165.1 billion. Money market funds continued to bleed assets, with investors pulling $118.8 billion from these funds during the month. Total outflows for money markets have reached $443.0 billion in 2010, which already surpasses the outflows for all of calendar year 2009. Year-to-date net inflows for ETFs reached $19.9 billion after $12.2 billion in inflows in April. Flows were positive for all ETF asset classes during the month.
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See below for additional highlights from the report on mutual funds: and ETFs.
Mutual Funds:
Domestic-stock funds had inflows of $6.3 billion in April, the largest inflow for the asset class since May 2009. April was also the first month of positive flows into actively managed U.S. stock funds since May 2009.
While taxable-bond funds retained their dominant position with inflows of $22.1 billion in April, support waned for municipal-bond funds, which had a rather lackluster month with inflows of $989 million.
Target-date funds have continued to steadily gather assets year to date, with inflows of $20.5 billion through April. These funds represent a significant percentage of total flows at many shops, accounting for more than half of Fidelity's total flows and almost 40% of T. Rowe Price's over the past 12 months.
Real estate funds, bolstered by strong returns over the trailing 12 months, have gathered $1.5 billion in assets this year through April, which is the category's best start since 2007.
Vanguard gathered the most mutual fund assets in April of any fund family with $8.6 billion. Hotchkis and Wiley, Matthews Asia, and Osterweis also saw strong inflows during the month.
ETFs:
Small- and mid-cap U.S. stock ETFs experienced solid inflows in April, gathering assets of $1.9 billion and $976 million, respectively. Large-cap ETFs as a whole suffered outflows of about $1.5 billion in April, led by steep outflows of roughly $4.6 billion from SPDR S&P 500 SPY.
Taxable-bond ETFs continued to have strong inflows. Short-term bond ETFs took in $517 million in April, reflecting investors' preference for the short end of the yield curve.
Although it still ranks third in terms of ETF assets, Vanguard continued to take market share from its biggest competitors, iShares and State Street. Vanguard has had about $11.8 billion in total net inflows year to date and has more than doubled its ETF assets over the past year.
Investor demand for emerging-markets exposure partly fueled inflows of $5.6 billion to international-stock ETFs in April.
To view the complete report, please visit http://www.global.morningstar.com/aprilflows10. For more information about Morningstar Fund Flows, please click here.
