Morningstar Reports U.S. Mutual Fund Asset Flows for August 2013

Morningstar, Inc., a leading provider of independent investment research, today reported estimated U.S. mutual fund asset flows for August 2013. The fixed-income exodus continued in August, as mutual fund investors pulled $15.5 billion from taxable-bond funds and $11.8 billion from municipal-bond funds. Since the end of April, bond funds have seen outflows of $81.9 billion, with taxable-bond and municipal-bond offerings losing 1.6 percent and 6.6 percent of beginning assets, respectively.

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

• Bond funds have not suffered universally. Assets in bank-loan funds have doubled over the past year, benefiting in the rising interest rate environment. Ultrashort bond funds, which have become a substitute for money market funds amidst low yields, have also seen strong inflows.
• Institutional and retail investors diverge when it comes to emerging markets, as ETFs, which appeal primarily to an institutional clientele, continued to see outflows from the asset class in August while mutual funds, largely held by individual investors, saw another month of inflows to emerging markets.
• After finishing 2012 as one of the top accumulating funds, assets in PIMCO Total Return have declined by $41.8 billion over the last four months—$26.1 billion from outflows and $15.7 billion from share price declines.
• Oakmark International, which has a Morningstar Analyst Rating™ of Gold, had inflows of about $2.0 billion in August. The fund, managed by David Herro, Morningstar's International-Stock Fund Manager of the Decade, has gained 37 percent over the last year.

To view the complete report, please visit http://www.global.morningstar.com/augflows13. To view a video recapping August's U.S. asset flow trends, please visit http://bit.ly/aug2013flows. For more information about Morningstar Asset Flows, please visit http://global.morningstar.com/assetflows.