LIVE MARKETS-BofA clients dumped US stocks across all 11 sectors last week
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BOFA CLIENTS DUMPED US STOCKS ACROSS ALL 11 SECTORS LAST WEEK
BofA Securities equity and quant strategist Jill Carey Hall says that last week, with the S&P 500 index .SPX sliding 2.1%, clients were net sellers of U.S. stocks, driven by single-stock outflows (-$5.9 billion). Equity ETFs saw inflows (+$1.7 billion).
"All major client groups sold US equities last week, led by Institutional clients (2nd week of outflows). Hedge fund clients were sellers after buying the prior week and retail clients were sellers for the 2nd week," writes Hall in her note.
She adds that outflows were entirely in large caps. Small and micro-cap equities garnered inflows for the first time since mid-January; mid caps captured inflows for the third time in four weeks.
Corporate client buybacks slowed week-over-week, and as a percentage of market cap have been tracking below typical seasonal trends for the last 11 weeks.
Hall says clients offloaded stocks in all 11 sectors, led by Energy, which has seen outflows since the start of the Iran conflict. In fact, she says that the four-week average net flows for Energy stocks are the most negative in BofA's data history since 2008.
Even Tech suffered outflows after being the sole sector clients bought the prior week (first outflows for Tech in six weeks).
In terms of ETFs, Hall says clients bought equity ETFs across two of the three major styles (value/blend, while they sold growth) and all size segments (large/mid/small/broad market caps). With this, clients returned to buying U.S. ETFs after two weeks of large outflows and inflows into EM/global markets outside the U.S.
Seven of 11 sectors saw ETF inflows, led by Energy, Real Estate and Financials.
Energy ETFs have continued to score inflows since the start of the year despite single-stock outflows most weeks. Tech ETFs experienced the biggest outflows.
(Terence Gabriel)
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