BOSTON, (Reuters) – State Street Global Advisors last month saw more redemptions than all other asset managers, losing $5.5 billion, though investors flocked to one of its gold funds, according to data released on Wednesday.
Investors pulled more…
FRC said that investors pulled $4.8 billion out of State Street’s SPDR Trust, the industry’s oldest exchange-traded fund. Because the SPDR is based on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index where returns have been meager, FRC analysts were not surprised by the huge outflows in January.
"It seems to be that people were chasing returns," FRC analyst Shauna Ginsberg said.
Ginsberg said that State Street’s investment flows have been volatile in recent months as clients, especially institutional investors, move money quickly to try to lock in the best returns.
ETFs resemble mutual funds but trade on the exchanges like stocks. They have been top-sellers recently, with investors favoring those that track overseas markets, such as ETFs from Barclays Global Investors for the MSCI EAFE, MSCI Emerging Markets and MSCI Japan indexes.
This trend also explains how State Street’s streetTRACKS Gold fund, another ETF, ranked No. 7 among the best-selling U.S. mutual funds in January when it pulled in $1.23 billion in new money.
Demand for this fund more than doubled from the $552 million it attracted in December, and was up from the $791 million it attracted in January 2005, FRC data show.
"Commodities are extremely hot right now and we are seeing that in terms of investor demand," Ginsberg said.
As of last Thursday, gold-oriented funds ranked as some of the best-performing funds by asset class or sector this year, returning 10.9 percent, according to Lipper Inc., a unit of Reuters Group Plc.
At the same time global and international stock funds, which have been popular for months, pulled in more money than any other asset class in January, adding $27.8 billion.
Funds that specialize in U.S. stocks lost $3.1 billion after seeing inflows of $7.9 billion in December.
In a familiar pattern, Los Angeles-based American Funds, part of the privately held Capital Group, posted the biggest inflows in the month, adding $8.6 billion in new cash.
The FRC data show that American Funds again ranked as the best-selling fund complex, managing all of the three top sellers.
The Vanguard Group and Barclays Global Investors ranked as the second- and third-most popular fund complexes.
Even though Fidelity Investments manages three of 10 best-selling funds, the company ranked only as the eighth best-selling fund complex in January.
Putnam Investments, which was tainted in an industry-wide trading scandal, saw $1.4 billion leave the firm in January, followed closely by AIM Distributors, which suffered $1.3 billion in redemptions.
Fonte: Reuters
