Morningstar: Passive taxable bond funds drove inflows

Morningstar today reported estimated U.S. mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) asset flows for October 2015.

Highlights from Morningstar's report about U.S. asset flows in October:        

• Despite stock-market gains worldwide, taxable-bond funds led all asset classes in October with inflows of $16.6 billion, the highest intake for the category group since March 2015. Passively managed funds drove these inflows; active taxable-bond funds saw a $1.5 billion outflow.
• All category groups experienced active-fund outflows with the exception of municipal-bond and alternatives funds. International-equity funds continued to receive steady inflows, although smaller in magnitude than those seen earlier this year.
• In a complete reversal from September, high-yield and intermediate-term bond were among the top five categories with the greatest inflows after landing on the list of categories with the greatest outflows a month ago. 
• Each of the top-five actively managed funds in terms of October inflows were fixed-income funds: Fidelity Advisor® Total Bond, DoubleLine Total Return Bond, PIMCO Income, Northern High Yield Fixed Income, and Metropolitan West Total Return Bond.
• Franklin Templeton slipped from the sixth to seventh spot on the list of largest asset managers after 11 consecutive months of outflows. BlackRock/iShares, with $15.0 billion, edged out Vanguard, with $14.7 billion, in terms of passive flows for the second straight month.

Morningstar estimates net flow for mutual funds by computing the change in assets not explained by the performance of the fund and net flow for ETFs by computing the change in shares outstanding.

To view the complete report, please visit http://www.global.morningstar.com/octflows15.