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TECH SCORES RECORD INFLOWS AS CLIENTS DUMP MOST OTHER SECTORS, BOFA SAYS

BofA Securities equity and quant strategist Jill Carey Hall says that last week, with the S&P 500 index .SPX sliding 1.9%, clients were net sellers of U.S. equities, driven by both single-stock outflows (-$8.3 billion; fourth-largest since 2008) and equity ETF outflows (-$1.1 billion, largest in six months).

"Selling was driven by institutional clients, who had previously been net buyers for 3 weeks. Private clients were also net sellers (for the 2nd straight week). Hedge fund clients were the only net buyers, snapping 4 straight weeks of selling," writes Hall in her note.

She adds that clients offloaded single stocks in all size segments, where small and micro caps have the longest recent selling streak at eight weeks.

Corporate client buybacks accelerated week-over-week, but buybacks as a percentage of market cap have been tracking below typical seasonal trends for the last 10 weeks.

Hall says clients sold stocks in nine of the 11 sectors, led by near-record outflows from Financials (which has seen outflows every week since 2026 kicked off). Energy, Discretionary, Staples, Utilities and Materials stocks all saw record or near-record outflows as well, and Communication Services saw its first outflows since late December.

Tech scored the biggest inflows, its largest ever in BofA's data since 2008. Healthcare was the only other sector to garner inflows.

In terms of ETFs, Hall says clients bought Growth/Value ETFs but were big sellers of Blend ETFs for the second straight week. By size, outflows were primarily in Large-Cap ETFs as clients bought Small/Mid-Cap and Broad-Market ETFs.

Six of 11 sectors saw ETF inflows, led by Financials, Tech and Energy.

Materials ETFs suffered the biggest outflows.

(Terence Gabriel)

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