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BOFA CLIENTS NET BUYERS FOR A 6TH STRAIGHT WEEK, BUT INFLOWS WANE

BofA Securities equity and quant strategist Jill Carey Hall says that last week, with the S&P 500 index .SPX sliding 3.1%, clients were net buyers of U.S. equities (+$0.5B) for a sixth straight week. However, she noted that inflows, which were the most muted in six weeks, were entirely driven by ETFs as clients sold single stocks for the first time since late October.

"Private clients were net buyers for a 13th consecutive week, the longest start-of-year buying streak in our data history since '08, but for the last five weeks this group has shifted to selling single stocks despite still buying ETFs," writes Hall in her note.

She adds that "institutional clients were the biggest sellers (second week of selling/largest outflow since Oct.) and hedge funds were sellers for the fourth consecutive week."

Corporate client buybacks are tracking below typical seasonal levels for the first time in eight weeks.

In terms of S&P 500 groups, Hall says clients sold stocks in six of the 11 GICs sectors, led by tech, financials and consumer discretionary.

Energy saw the biggest inflows, while clients also bought communication services, industrials, materials and real estate.

Regarding ETFs, Hall said clients bought equity ETFs across large/mid/small caps, but offloaded broad market ETFs. They snapped up both growth and value ETFs, but sold blend ETFs.

Clients bought ETFs in 6 of the 11 sectors, led by tech ETFs despite single stock outflows. Financial and industrials ETFs saw the largest outflows.

(Terence Gabriel)

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