Assets keep flowing toward index and exchange-traded funds

By Mon, Dec 15, 2014

PIMCO's firm-level outflows slowed to $12.8 billion after much larger redemptions in September and October. Janus, with Bill Gross on board, experienced its second positive month in November after 36 consecutive months of outflows.

The pattern of outflows for actively managed funds and inflows for passive funds continued in November 2014, according to Morningstar’s monthly report on U.S. mutual fund and exchange-traded fund [ETF] asset flows.

Over the trailing one-year period, active U.S. equity funds lost $91.9 billion, and passive U.S. equity funds gathered $156.1 billion. (Morningstar estimates net flow for mutual funds by computing the change in assets not explained by the performance of the fund and net flow for ETFs by computing the change in shares outstanding.)

  • Active taxable-bond funds collected $5.6 billion in November after outflows of $18.7 billion in September and $23.1 billion in October. Most of those outflows were attributable to redemptions from PIMCO Total Return. Passive taxable-bond funds had inflows for the 12th consecutive month.
  • Highest inflows: Metropolitan West Total Return Bond and Dodge & Cox Income were the two actively managed funds with the highest inflows for the second straight month. SPDR S&P 500 ETF and three Vanguard funds topped the list of passive funds by November inflows.
  • Highest outflows: IMCO Total Return and PIMCO Low Duration were among the five active funds with the highest outflows in November. MainStay Marketfield also had significant redemptions for the second consecutive month.
  • Vanguard and iShares led inflows at the provider level, collecting $20.7 billion and $13.5 billion, respectively.
  • PIMCO’s firm-level outflows slowed to $12.8 billion after much larger redemptions in September and October. Janus, with Bill Gross on board, experienced its second positive month in November after 36 consecutive months of outflows. Gross’ new fund, Janus Global Unconstrained Bond, with inflows of $0.8 billion compared with the firm’s overall inflows of $0.7 billion, singlehandedly kept Janus in positive territory.

To view the complete report, please visit http://www.global.morningstar.com/novflows14. For more information about Morningstar Asset Flows, please visit http://global.morningstar.com/assetflows.