Fund investors retreated from nearly all US asset classes last week, pulling the largest amount of net assets from mutual funds and exchange-traded funds that hold US equities since February 2018 and withdrawing more than $100 billion from bond funds over the same time, according to data released on Wednesday by the Investment Company Institute.
The steep withdrawals came as markets continued to be volatile due to the rapidly spreading coronavirus, which is threatening to send the global economy into a deep recession. The US benchmark S&P 500 finished the first quarter on Tuesday with its worst decline since the 2008 finiancial crisis, while oil prices suffered their worst one-month decline on record.
Overall, fund investors pulled nearly $30.2 billion out of funds that hold US stocks, nearly five times the rate of selling from the week before. World stock funds lost nearly $10.6 billion in assets, more than double their declines from the previous week.
Bond funds, meanwhile, lost nearly $100.8 billion in assets, finishing a two-week period in which investors have pulled more than $215 billion out of the category. Approximately $175 billion of that total came out of taxable bond funds, while municipal debt funds saw approximately $20 billion in net withdrawals.
Commodity funds were the only category that saw inflows, gaining slightly more than $2.8 billion in new assets.