Investors pile into stocks, dump US Treasuries - BofA

Reuters

Published Feb 02, 2024 03:06AM ET

Updated Feb 02, 2024 04:21AM ET

LONDON (Reuters) -Investors ploughed $20.1 billion into stocks in the week to Wednesday, a report from Bank of America citing data from EPFR said on Friday, rounding off a strong month for equities driven once again by rallying tech shares.

U.S. Treasuries meanwhile saw their biggest weekly outflow in seven weeks at $3.6 billion, while Treasury inflation-protected securities got their biggest inflow since July 2023 of $300 million, BofA said.

U.S. bond yields closed January slightly higher on the month as their prices fell, but have fallen sharply this week, in part due to a safety bid from renewed jitters over regional U.S. banks.

The S&P 500 stock index, a broad measure of U.S. shares, ended January around 1.5% higher, although the regional bank selloff has taken the shine off that rally as February trade gets underway.

BofA said the 9% selloff over two days this week in U.S. regional banks shares was different from the rout seen during the March banking crisis almost a year ago, with corporate bond spreads so far largely contained.

In its weekly roundup of fund flows in and out of world markets, BofA said investors piled $15.2 billion into cash, and $5.9 billion into bonds but sold $800 million of gold.

Tech stocks saw a strong $2.1 billion inflows, while infrastructure stocks saw their largest inflow since November 2022 at $200 million, the BofA report said.

Inflows into emerging markets remained strong, BofA added, with a $6.8 billion inflow to stocks in the week to Wednesday.

China alone saw a $6.3 billion inflow into stocks, following on from an almost $12 billion inflow the previous week. This meant the past four weeks saw the largest cumulative inflow on record of just over $21 billion.

Chinese markets have been battered by a crisis in the property sector and weak economic growth but signs that Beijing is stepping up efforts to restore confidence had helped stabilise sentiment towards the world's no.2 economy somewhat.