FYI:
The outflows from total long-term mutual funds have tempered for the two weeks ended October 16. While equity mutual funds posted negative flows of nearly $17 billion, bond mutual funds experienced around $10 billion in net inflows.
As a result, total long-term outflows were $8.5 billion the given the hybrid bonds also saw withdrawals. Domestic U.S. equities saw the highest amount of withdrawals along with multi-cap equities. On the other end of the spectrum were taxable and investment-grade bonds, which saw relatively high net inflows.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was very close to taking the U.K. out of the European Union by the October 31 deadline with a deal, but he lacked just a few votes in the British Parliament. As such, the European Union approved an extension of Britain’s exit until January 31, which could be instituted earlier if an agreement in the U.K. parliament is reached sooner. In another defeat for Johnson, the U.K. parliament rejected an early general election, although he is expected to try again.
Germany’s ZEW economic sentiment was largely unchanged in October at negative 22.5, the seventh negative consecutive month. Excluding April 2019, ZEW has not been positive since March 2018.
U.S. retail sales declined 0.3% in September, the first drop since May. Analysts had expected a rise of 0.3%. Core retail sales were down slightly by 0.1%, a figure not seen since April 2019.
Europe-wide manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) has been in contraction mode since January 2019. It was no surprise that the index came in at 45.7 in October, unchanged from the prior month.
Eurozone services PMI are still in expansion territory, although the expansion has been weak. The measure rose marginally from 51.6 to 51.8 – the weakest since 2014.
Eurozone has maintained its monetary policy unchanged at the last meeting presided by outgoing President Mario Draghi, who has been credited with saving the Eurozone at the height of the sovereign debt crisis in 2012. In his farewell address, Draghi said the monetary policy is losing some of its potency and called for fiscal support and deeper integration. Draghi will be replaced by Christine Lagarde, the former chief of the International Monetary Fund, on November 1.
Regards,
Ted
https://mutualfunds.com/news/2019/10/29/mutual-funds-scorecard-october-29-2019-edition/
Comments
While the referenced document presents some interesting market data, I am not motivated to act. The 2 week timeframe of this collected data is simply too short a period given my timeframe for action.
What would be a more actionable data presentation would be a history of these two week summaries forma very long total period. With this added data, trends could possibly be identified that are meaningful and require attention by the longer timeframe investor.
Best Wishes