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BofA CLIENTS SNAP UP SINGLE STOCKS

BofA Securities equity and quant strategist Jill Carey Hall says that last week, with the S&P 500 index .SPX rebounding 2.4%, clients bought U.S. equities for the second straight week.

With this, she says that there were big inflows into single stocks (+$4.3 billion, largest in two years) along with ETFs (+$1.6 billion, biggest in six weeks).

"All major client groups were buyers for the 2nd straight week, led by institutional clients (2nd week of buying after selling since May). Net buys by institutional clients were the biggest since last Sept. and the 10th-largest in history since '08. Private clients have been the most consistent recent buyers (inflows for 6 straight weeks and 33 of the last 35 weeks)," writes Hall in her weekly note.

She adds that corporate client buybacks increased, but were shy of typical seasonal levels for the sixth week in a row.

Hall says that clients snapped up stocks in seven of the 11 GICS sectors with inflows into both defensive and cyclical sectors in aggregate.

Tech garnered the largest inflows followed by financials, discretionary and staples.

Industrials suffered the largest outflows, followed by healthcare, communication services and real estate.

In terms of ETFs, Hall says clients bought equity ETFs after selling the prior week, with buying in nine out of the past 10 weeks.

Large/small cap ETFs saw inflows and as did blend/growth/value ETFs. In fact, value ETFs saw their 27th straight week of inflows.

Clients bought ETFs in six of the 11 sectors, led by staples, energy and materials.

Despite big tech single stock inflows, tech ETFs suffered the largest outflows.

(Terence Gabriel)

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