When investors flee funds during a downturn, they don’t always return when the market bounces back.
The mutual fund industry received mixed news in the Investment Company Institute’s latest survey of fund assets and new flows, as the combined assets of U.S. mutual funds increased by $946.6 billion, or 5.3 percent, to $18.65 trillion in the month of January from a December 2018 total of $17.7 trillion
However, mutual fund assets are still well below the January 2018 total of $19.3 trillion. Domestic equity funds lagged their January 2018 asset totals by more than $800 billion, from $10.86 trillion in January 2018 to $10.03 trillion in January 2019. Bond mutual funds, on the other hand, had slightly higher asset totals, rising from $4.09 trillion in January 2018 to $4.13 trillion in January of this year.
New net cash flows turned positive for most mutual fund categories in January of this year, with long-term mutual funds adding $22.9 billion in inflows and money market funds adding another $4.4 billion. The only mutual fund category to experience net outflows in January, hybrid funds, suffered $984 million in negative net flows.
January’s net positive flows were not enough to offset December’s outflows, when long-term funds shed $183.2 billion in assets amid volatility that spread across multiple asset classes and fund categories.
In terms of total numbers of funds, the mutual fund universe continues to grow, with a total of 8,088 funds reported in January 2019, up from 8,078 in December 2018 and 7,966 in January 2018.
The Investment Company Institute’s survey is based on mutual fund companies’ reports on actual assets, sales and redemptions for the period of study.