Data collected by the Investment Company Institute, a Washington-based trade group, also show equity-fund redemptions. Investors pulled $8.7 billion from domestic stock funds in the week ended April 18 and added $8.7 billion to non-U.S. equity funds and $5.3 billion to bond funds, ICI data show.
Investors, according to a Wall Street adage, typically sell in May, said Brian Leung, a global equity strategist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in New York.
"This year they decided to sell early," Leung said in a telephone interview.
Leung's team, in a note published yesterday, wrote that it will be hard to generate a rally in global stocks "in the absence of big, strong inflows to equity funds."