It seems European investors followed this old market adage in May 2015, since equity funds faced outflows of €3.1 bn. But, even more noteworthy, the European mutual fund industry faced a slowdown in flows into long-term mutual funds. Those are two of the conclusions of Lipper’s latest monthly snapshot of European fund flow trends (data as at end May 2015).
«That said, the European mutual funds industry still enjoyed net inflows of €16.3 bn into these kinds of products for May, but the flow numbers stood far behind the numbers of the former months of the year. Opposite to April, the majority of the flows went into mixed-asset funds (+€18.9 bn), followed by bond funds (+€1.1 bn), property funds (+€0.6 bn), and commodity funds (+€0.4 bn). On the other side of the table, equity funds faced the highest outflows (-€3.1 bn) from long-term mutual funds, followed by alternative/hedge products (-€1.4 bn) and “other” products (-€0.4 bn)», point out Detlef Glow, Head of EMEA research, who wrote this report.
Key highlights below:
- The European funds industry enjoyed net inflows of €16.3 bn into long-term mutual funds for May. Mixed-asset funds (+€18.9 bn) were the best selling asset class overall, followed by bond funds (+€1.1 bn). Meanwhile, equity funds faced net outflows (-€3.1 bn).
- Money market products faced overall net outflows of €12.8 bn for May, split into inflows of €1.0 bn into enhanced money market funds and outflows of €13.7 bn from money market funds.
- The single market with the highest net inflows for May was once again Italy (+€4.9 bn), followed by Switzerland (+€2.1 bn) and Germany (+€1.5 bn). Meanwhile, Spain (-€1.5 bn), Austria (-€0.4 bn), and Finland (-€.0.2 bn) stood on the other side.
- Intesa SanPaolo, with net sales of €2.5 bn, was the best selling group of long-term funds for May, slightly ahead of BlackRock (+€2.5 bn) and Pioneer (+€2.0 bn).
- The ten best selling funds gathered inflows of €6.3 bn, 38.98% of the overall inflows for May, showing that fund flows in Europe are highly concentrated.
«For bond funds inflows were driven by funds domiciled in Switzerland (+€1.8 bn), followed by funds domiciled in the international fund hubs (+€0.8 bn), Sweden (+€0.6 bn), France (+€0.5 bn), and Denmark (+€0.4 bn). On the other side Spain (-€1.8 bn) was once again the domicile with the highest net outflows from bond funds, bettered somewhat by funds domiciled in Germany (-€1.1 bn) and Austria (-€0.5 bn)», explained Glow.