“Analysts agree the big sums moving into stock-based mutual funds represent a change from last year, when investors yanked a total of $129 billion out of equity funds while pouring $258 billion into fixed-income funds,”Johanna Bennett wrote for Barron’s.
“I’m not here to say people are bullish and rerisking,” Fink said. “If they’re not bearish on the world, but not bullish, they probably have overallocation to bonds, and they’re probably looking and re-orienting that.”
Overall, six times as much capital went into stock ETFs versus bond funds from iShares in the fourth quarter. Analysts think the economy will pick up in the later half of 2012, as the first quarter was spent ironing out spending cuts and tax hikes that do not scrape the surface on the budget deficit. [Three Reasons Stock ETFs Could Falter]
Tisha Guerrero contributed to this article.