Optimism over the ongoing economic recovery and easing concerns over abrupt changes to the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy helped fuel the biggest weekly inflows into global equity funds in 10 weeks.
According to Lipper data, investors funneled $19.19 billion into global equity funds for the week ended Wednesday, the biggest weekly inflow since June 23, Reuters reports.
Among the most popular exchange traded fund plays over the past week, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY) attracted $6.9 billion in net inflows, Invesco QQQ Trust (NASDAQ: QQQ) brought in $2.1 billion, and Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI) added $1.7 billion, according to ETFdb.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell during the Jackson Hole symposium last week assuaged market fears of an abrupt withdrawal of Covid-19 pandemic-era stimulus, signaling that the central bank would be patient in hiking interest rates as the economy tries to recover toward full employment.
Meanwhile, investors threw a net $11.64 billion into U.S. equity funds, while European and Asian funds brought in $4.78 billion and $1.54 billion, respectively.
Investors invested a net $1.64 billion among equity sector funds into the technology sector, its biggest weekly inflow in six weeks. Meanwhile, financials and healthcare funds also saw inflows of $879 million and $702 million, respectively.
On the other hand, government bond funds experienced a 40% decline in inflows from the prior week to $1.37 billion.
Additionally, emerging market funds flows showed investors bought a net $1.47 billion in equity funds and $986 million in bond funds.
Commodity funds also added some new money. Precious metal funds brought in a net $236 million after three consecutive weeks of outflows. Energy funds, though, suffered outflows for a third straight week.
Investors were also redeploying their cash hoards. Global money market funds experienced outflows of $46.25 billion for the week, its largest weekly outflow in 10 weeks.
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