Select corporate bond exchange traded funds, both the investment-grade and high-yield varieties, have seen significant inflows since the start of 2014 even as investors have not been shy about pulling cash from ETFs focused on U.S. equities.
U.S. equity ETFs are down $24.7 billion in assets from redemptions, with three products accounting for essentially the entire ETF exodus from domestic stock funds,” said Nicholas Colas, chief market strategist at ConvergEx Group a global brokerage company based in New York, in a note out last Wednesday. [Following ETF Cash]
Some big name corporate bond ETFs are bucking the trend.
“With a weekly combined average inflow of $240 million for high-grade and high-yield funds, total inflows for 2014 are now in excess of $1.4 billion, driven by a 9.8% year-on-year increase in money going into high-yield ETFs, with 3.3% finding its way into investment grade ETFs,” Risk.com reports, citing Bank of America Merrill Lynch data.
“The combined credit ETF inflow in the second week of February was the highest in 16 weeks. Equity funds saw inflows quadrupling in the first half of February to almost $4 billion, the thirty-third consecutive week of inflows,” according to Risk.com.