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BOFA CLIENTS RUN FROM SINGLE STOCKS

BofA Securities equity and quant strategist Jill Carey Hall says that last week, with the S&P 500 index .SPX falling 1.4%, clients were net sellers of U.S. equities, driven by near-historic single stock outflows (-$8.3 billion; third highest in BofA's data history since 2008); equity ETFs saw inflows (+$2.3 billion; largest since mid-December).

According to Hall, selling was driven by institutional clients (biggest outflows since early January and the second-largest outflows ever, driven by single stock selling). Meanwhile, hedge fund clients were net buyers for the eighth time in the past nine weeks and private clients were buyers for the sixth straight week.

She adds that outflows were driven by large caps after three weeks of inflows. Small/micro caps suffered record outflows (based on stock+ETF flows, though micro-cap single stocks saw inflows). Clients snapped up mid caps, which have seen outflows most weeks since October.

Hall says clients offloaded stocks in nine of the 11 sectors, led by Financials (sixth straight week of outflows) and Staples (second biggest ever/largest since April 2018 after recent record inflows). Industrials, Tech and Consumer Discretionary stocks also experienced large outflows.

Communication Services and Utilities were the only sectors to see inflows. In fact, the four-week average flows for Communication Services hit another record high in the sector's history since 2018.

In terms of ETFs, Hall says clients bought ETFs across major styles (Growth, Value, Blend) and sizes (Small, Mid, Large, Broad Market). Fixed Income ETFs also saw large inflows.

Six of 11 sectors saw inflows, led by Industrials, whose four-week average ETF net flow is at record levels in BofA's data since 2017.

Outflows were led by Tech ETFs.

(Terence Gabriel)

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