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.
Though in a sign of the scale of the task, Chinese shares fell to fresh five-year lows on Friday and posted their worst weekly drop in five years. [MKTS/GLOB] [.SS]
BofA added that its Bull & Bear Indicator rose to a 2-1/2 year high of 6.1 from 6.0, helped by very strong inflows into emerging market stocks.