Long-term mutual funds and exchange-traded funds attracted $32.6 billion in investor assets in August, according to Morningstar. These flows were driven by strong demand for international-stock funds and "resurgent demand for fixed income," a report released Wednesday said.
"Funds focused on U.S. equity suffered a $4.1 billion outflow, dragged down by active U.S. equity funds, which suffered their sixth straight month of outflows," explained Michael Rawson, an analyst with the Chicago-based research group.
Overall assets in long-term mutual funds and ETFs, excluding money markets and funds of funds, hit $13.9 trillion. (Schwab/Laudus funds are not included in the tallies.)
"While the majority of those assets are invested in actively managed funds, the stronger flows to passive investments is reflected in their 11% organic growth rate compared with just 2% growth for active funds during the past year," stressed Rawson.
This month's data, for the first time, includes both mutual funds and ETFs. It also breaks out passive and active investments.
Morningstar says its decision to include ETFs and to split some data stemmed from the fact that ETFs now account for "a significant share" of fund assets and flows.
"In addition, a large share of the flows to mutual funds during the past several years [has] gone to passive investments, often within retirement savings accounts. These flows may not be completely representative of incremental investment decisions," the research organization noted.
Big Three
Vanguard continues to dominate flows through the strength of its passive lineup of mutual funds and ETFs, Morningstar says.
"In a difficult environment for active funds, Vanguard's $7 billion inflow during the past year is admirable, ranking 14th among active fund providers," Rawson added.
Morningstar added that a major source of Fidelity's outflows during the past year has been conversions to collective investment trusts. "However, it is surprising that these outflows are not being offset by organic inflows," it said.
The top three fund families, as measured by assets (excluding money markets and funds of funds) are Vanguard with $2.57 trillion, Fidelity with $1.24 trillion and American Funds with $1.18 trillion. Blackrock is catching up with $943 billion, and PIMCO trails the top four with $519 billion.
Bond Bets
While 2013 saw the start of "a great rotation" from bonds to equities after the Fed hinted at lower monetary stimulus, nobody "could have forecast how fast that rotation would fizzle out," Rawson explained in his latest report.
Through August 2014, taxable bond funds have drawn $99 billion as interest rates have fallen. In contrast, U.S. equity funds' inflows have totaled $3.5 billion in the same period.
