In BofA's latest equity client flow trend note, the investment bank's analysts said last week saw equity outflows across client groups, with even larger healthcare outflows.
Stock outflows continue to be led by individual stocks. Last week, Bank of America customers were net sellers of U.S. stocks for the third week in a row. Outflows were mainly from individual stocks, but ETFs saw inflows for five consecutive weeks.
“All major customer groups were sellers,” the bank said. “Hedge funds, institutional investors, and retail clients were all net sellers (for the sixth consecutive week, fourth consecutive week, and second week, respectively).Customers sold mainly mid-cap stocks, but large-cap and small-cap Money has flowed into stocks.”
But share buybacks are at multi-year highs, accelerated last week and are now above typical seasonal levels for six straight weeks.
By sector, net sales were led by healthcare, which was the eighth-largest weekly outflow in BofA data history, following the previous week's record outflow. “We have recently had the longest sales streak of any sector (the past nine weeks), with sales being driven by institutional investors and retail clients,” the investment bank said.
Meanwhile, capital inflows into communication services stocks were the largest for the second consecutive week.
