Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Funds withdrawn from long dollar and US equity positions

  • Reading the headlines below it seems investors want to be short USD and short USD equities while investing in other foreign equities and US Bonds. The thinking must be that a second shot of Fed stimulus awaits! If so, corporate bonds (Fed made a killing on AIG bonds as the risk aversion dies) will do well AND the dollar will continue to go south.
  • If you want to send your money to India and ride the carry train (long INRUSD) not a bad idea.
  • I also find it interesting that ETFs continue to become more popular. Wonder if small hedge funds are using them more (since banks are tightening and the easy money to hedge funds may be drying up) or individual investors are.
Fund Flow News Below

  1. Bond funds (+$24.6 billion) padded their coffers in December, while stock and mixed-equity funds (-$2.1 billion) and money market funds (-$7.7 billion) were in the red for the conventional funds business.
  2. - However, ETFs experienced inflows for both major macro groups: bond ETFs garnered $3.4 billion while stock and mixed-equity ETFs attracted $21.3 billion.
  3. - Investors continued to shun USDE Funds in December, redeeming a net $10.3 billion from the group. However, the other equity macro-groups caught investors' attention, drawing in a combined $8.2 billion.
  4. - Mixed-Equity Funds (+$3.8 billion) attracted the largest net inflows of Lipper's four equity macro-classifications for the first month in four.
  5. - A strengthening dollar and minor concerns over the extended run-up in world markets weighed marginally on World Equity Funds' flows, but the macro-group still attracted net inflows ($2.8 billion) for the ninth consecutive month.