Sweeter Markets Draw Funds In November

The surge came on the strength of $5.4 billion in net inflows from domestic equity funds and $4.5 billion from corporate bond funds.  Among the November highlights in the FRC report:

• High yield bonds led the way during the month among the top 20 Morningstar fund categories with $3.1 billion in net flows, bringing the year-to-date total up to $7.5 billion for this category.
• Vanguard Group and Fidelity Investments are once again top of the class in terms of assets, with $484 billion and $482 billon, respectively.
• American Funds did the best among funds groups in November net flows at $3.2 billion, with Fidelity coming in second at $2.2 billion.   Year-to-date American Funds was on top with $36.2 billion in net flow, while Vanguard followed with $35.7 billion.   Fidelity was fifth on the year-to-date net flow list with $8.7 billion.
• American’s Growth Fund bested its peers among November net flows with $646 million, edging out October’s largest flower PIMCO Total Return, which came in second with $616 million.   However, PIMCO still holds a large advantage year-to-date with $13.5 billion in net flows compared to the American’s Growth Fund’s $7.2 billion, one spot back.

Categories

Fund categories were equally impressive in November as measured by net flows, including:

• Domestic Hybrid – $1.7 billion
• Large Cap Value – $1.1 billion
• Short-term bond – $1.1 billion
• Intermediate-term bond – $970 million

Fund Groups

Behind Vanguard and Fidelity in the total asset race were:

• American Funds – $333 billion
• Franklin Distributors Inc – $151 billion
• Putnam Investments – $139 billion

Excluded from the report is all data from Money Market funds.

October saw stock and bond funds give back$564 million in net outflows.