BofA watched clients retract $2B last week as the S&P dropped

Bank of America’s global equity research team highlighted that its clients were overall net sellers of U.S. equities for the fourth consecutive week. Last week in which the S&P 500 declined by 3% BofA clients retracted a total of $2B from the equity space, as clients were net sellers of exchange traded funds but were purchasers of single stock positions.

While hedge fund clients and retail clients were net buyers on the week, BofA noted that its institutional clients were net sellers and have sold stocks for the last 5 weeks.

From a stock perspective, the institutions clients purchased positions in seven of the 11 S&P sectors and were led by Financials and Consumer Staples. On the flip side, Info Tech and Consumer Discretionary stocks observed the most significant weekly outflows after both of the segments observed inflows in the prior week.

Looking at flows from an exchange traded fund vantage point and market participants will have observed that BofA clients offloaded equity ETFs for the first time in six weeks. Outflows were seen across a broad range of funds as well. Some of the areas that observed outflows included growth ETFs (VUG) as well as large, mid, and small-cap funds. From an inflow perspective, value ETFs (VTV) and broad market ETFs (NYSEARCA:SPY) (VOO) (IVV) were able to bring in new money.

Additionally, of the 11 S&P sectors, exchange traded funds were purchased in six areas which were led by Health Care (NYSEARCA:XLV) while Financial ETFs (NYSEARCA:XLF) noticed the largest amount of weekly outflows.