US Investors Sell US Equities

A long bull market and fear of the Federal Reserve raising rates have US investors feeling skittish about US equities, says Morningstar's Tim Strauts

Christine Benz 17 August, 2015 | 12:38PM
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Christine Benz: Hi, I'm Christine Benz for Morningstar. Investors continue to favor international equity funds in 2015. Joining me to discuss the latest news in the world of fund flows is Tim Strauts. He is a Senior Markets Research Analyst with Morningstar.

Tim, thank you so much for being here.

Tim Strauts: Thanks for having me.

Benz: So, Tim, you and the team have been monitoring these fund flows into international equity funds. We've seen them outperform U.S. so far in 2015, but this has actually been going on for a while where investors have been choosing foreign funds at the expense of U.S.?

Strauts: Yeah, the trend has been happening for about 2.5 years now and it's only accelerated over the last year. In the last year a little over $210 billion has flowed towards international funds and in the U.S. equity space we've actually seen an outflow of a little over $10 billion in that same time period. So, investors are clearly preferring international right now.

Benz: And you think it has something to do with the fact that the investors in U.S. funds are sort of anticipating Fed tightening and thinking that the economic cycle in Europe in particular could be more favorable for foreign fund investors?

Strauts: I think we're kind of in a unique period here where typically fund flows follow performance, but that really hasn't happened here because U.S. equities have actually been a better performer than international. But what's happening I think is that investors are very skittish about the U.S. bull market. They have never really fully bought in to the performance.

They feel that in some cases maybe the Fed is manipulating things with the ultra-low interest rates and they really just haven't bought in. So, investors have been allocating over the last several years to international because potentially the valuations look a little more attractive.

Benz: So, when you look at the types of international equity funds that are getting the flows, where is the money going?

Strauts: So, it's focused on the index funds right now. The largest flowing fund is the Vanguard Total International Stock Fund and we have seen within the past 2.5 years flows into emerging markets, ETFs being strong, that trend has actually switched recently where now most of the flows are going to the developed international markets and away from emerging.

Benz: Okay. So, you touched on the problems that we've been seeing with U.S. equity fund flows. The issue has really been concentrated in the active products. Investors are pulling their money there. Many are reallocating to passive products, but it hasn't really been able to make up the money coming out of active funds?

Strauts: Yeah. In the last year active U.S. equity has lost $158 billion and passive U.S. equity has taken in a positive $140 billion. So, they are almost balancing out, but they are still to the negative because of the large active outflows.

Benz: Okay. Tim, thank you so much for being here to share your insights.

Strauts: Thanks for having me.

Benz: Thanks for watching. I'm Christine Benz for Morningstar.

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Christine Benz

Christine Benz  is director of personal finance at Morningstar and author of 30-Minute Money Solutions: A Step-by-Step Guide to Managing Your Finances.

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