Last week, during which the S&P 500 gained almost 2.6%, BofA clients were “big” net buyers of US stocks, according to the firm’s equity analysts.
As much as $4.5 billion went into the stocks, marking the second consecutive week of inflows. Overall, last week’s inflows were the largest since October 2022 with both single stocks and ETFs attracting large inflows.
Hedge funds and institutional clients were big buyers, the analysts added, with last week’s inflows the third-largest by hedge funds in BofA’s data history since 2008.
“Clients bought stocks across size segments, where small caps notably saw their biggest inflows in a year. But YTD inflows have remained entirely large cap driven, with positioning/flows in SMID YTD still very light/bearish,” they wrote in a client note.
Interestingly, retail clients returned to selling after a week of buying. Sector-wise, clients bought stocks in 7 out of 11 sectors, led by Communication Services and Consumer Discretionary with the latter seeing the largest inflows in BofA’s data history
“Energy saw the biggest outflows, and four-week avg. flows for the sector have flipped negative after inflows since early May. Despite small Tech inflows last week, four-week avg. flows for Tech have also turned negative the last several weeks after consistently positive inflows since last July,” the analysts concluded.