Morningstar: Investors still searching for yield

Morningstar, Inc. (NASDAQ: MORN), a leading provider of independent investment research, today reported estimated U.S. mutual fund asset flows through June 2012. Long-term mutual funds recorded their lowest monthly intake year to date with just $10.8 billion in new money, and money market funds saw outflows of $30.1 billion after tepid May inflows of $1.4 billion.

Additional highlights from Morningstar's report on mutual fund flows:

• Investors seem to have renewed their faith in municipal-bond funds and are increasingly comfortable taking on risk in search of yield. High-yield muni bond funds took in $6.7 billion through June, as the category's median return was 6.7% in the first half of the year.
• The balanced asset class, which includes primarily allocation funds, saw redemptions of $890 million in June, its first month of outflows in 2012. Some of the world-allocation category's most prominent offerings suffered outflows; BlackRock Global Allocation, IVA Worldwide, and Ivy Asset Strategy lost $460 million, $232 million, and $171 million, respectively.
• Taxable-bond funds saw inflows increase by more than $3.2 billion over last month to $10.9 billion. U.S.-stock funds remained in familiar territory with outflows of $8.5 billion, while international-stock funds, driven by inflows to diversified emerging-markets funds, collected $4.8 billion.
• DoubleLine Total Return Bond led all funds in June with inflows of $2.1 billion. It leads all funds over the trailing 12 months, too, with $18.1 billion in new assets. 

To view the complete report, please visit http://www.global.morningstar.com/juneflows12. To view a video recapping June's U.S. fund flow trends, please visit http://bit.ly/juneflows.