The Financial Times ran an interesting piece this weekend about Investors worldwide pulling almost $100bn out of equity funds in the first three months of this year – a record shift, and part of a long term trend away from the US market. The article goes on:
The outflows also accelerate a trend for investors to put their money
either in ultra-safe cash options such as money market funds, or into
riskier markets and high-fee products such as hedge funds. They are
abandoning the middle ground of mainstream equity and fixed income
funds, especially in the developed markets.
At the same time money market funds have seen record inflow’s, adding c$140bn in the same period.
There is clearly a great deal of cash out there waiting for markets to stabilize. Albeit much of the current outflow is caused by the credit squeeze, with low cost ETFs on one side, and the democratization of active money management on the other (e.g. on Covestor), unless they pick up their own performance and transparency who would argue that these funds will flow back.
