Morningstar has reported estimated US mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) asset flows for June 2017 with investors putting USD9.3 billion into US equity passive funds, down from USD13.1 billion in May 2017.
On the active front, investors pulled USD14.6 billion out of US equity funds, compared with USD16.2 billion in the previous month. 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.
Investors continued to pour money into taxable-bond and international-equity funds. Unlike previous months, the taxable-bond category group saw higher inflows on the passive front than on the active one with inflows of USD18.5 billion and USD14.4 billion, respectively. Taxable-bond funds continued as the overall leader among category groups, with inflows of USD32.9 billion; international equity followed with inflows of USD28.9 billion.
The three Morningstar Categories with the highest inflows in June remained the same as the previous month: foreign large blend, intermediate-term bond, and large blend. A fourth category attracting strong flows in June was diversified emerging markets, anticipating stronger growth potential after the MSCI Emerging Markets Index returned 18.4 percent year to date.
Among top US fund families, American Funds was the leader in active flows with USD3.9 billion, followed by Vanguard with USD2.9 billion. On the passive front, Vanguard was the top fund family, with inflows of USD22.7 billion, closely followed by BlackRock/iShares with USD22.4 billion in inflows.
Fidelity Series Intrinsic Opportunities Fund and Fidelity Series Growth & Income Fund attracted the largest active flows in June, both approximately USD3.1 billion. PIMCO Income, which has a Morningstar Analyst Rating of Silver, was pushed to third place with flows of USD2.6 billion. The passive fund with the highest inflows was Vanguard S&P 500 ETF Index Fund, which saw USD3.1 billion in inflows.
Fidelity Series Equity-Income Fund had the highest outflows for active funds at USD6.5 billion and Gold-rated Harbor International saw outflows of USD1.0 billion, its third consecutive month on the bottom-flowing list. On the passive front, Power Shares NASDAQ-100 Index Tracking Stock ETF saw the highest outflows of USD2.8 billion.
