Morningstar, a leading provider of independent investment research, has reported estimated U.S. mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) asset flows for November 2015. 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.
The trend of heavy investor allocations to international stocks and passive positions in U.S. equity and taxable-bond funds seems poised to continue. Intermediate-term bond and foreign large blend remained two of the most popular categories in November.
Actively managed U.S. equity funds saw their sixth-worst monthly outflow in November since 1993, when Morningstar began tracking asset flow data.
The high-yield bond category has seen volatile flows over the past few months and landed among the five categories with the greatest outflows in November. The turbulence continued into early December following the announcement from Third Avenue Management that it would liquidate its high-yield bond fund, Third Avenue Focused Credit, without allowing investors to redeem their shares right away.
Outflows from active funds continued in November for a number of fund companies, including PIMCO, Franklin Templeton, Fidelity, and J.P. Morgan. On the passive side, Vanguard and iShares took in $14.2 billion and $13.0 billion, respectively. Vanguard has collected inflows of $1 trillion since the beginning of the financial crisis in December 2007 and has seen just two months of outflows since then, October 2010 and June 2013.
Each of the five active funds with the highest monthly inflows were fixed-income funds. PIMCO Income, which has a Morningstar Analyst Rating™ of Silver, led the pack with inflows of $1.2 billion, and Bronze-rated T. Rowe Price New Income was a newcomer to the list with inflows of $741 million.