US loan funds post outflow of $344M for week ended Aug. 3

U.S. loan funds reported a net outflow of $344.4 million for the week ended Aug. 3, according to Lipper. The latest exodus was narrower than last week's outflow of $832.5 million.

It was the eighth straight outflow for the asset class, which has seen a total of $8.5 billion pulled from loan funds during that span. Moreover, out of the last 13 weeks, only two of those have featured any gains, and those were minor inflows of $33 million and $40 million at the beginning of June.

ETFs went back into the black this past week for the first time in seven weeks, posting an inflow of $110.3 million. That was offset by mutual funds, which lost $454.7 million. Mutual funds have seen 13 consecutive weeks of outflows totaling $8.7 billion.

With this week's weaker outflow, the four-week moving average moved to negative $812.7 million, from $1 billion last week, which is an improvement from four weeks ago, when the four-week average was negative $1.3 billion, the deepest deficit since April 2020.

Despite the recent downturn, the year-to-date inflow remains positive, at $8.5 billion, down from $8.9 billion last week and $9.7 billion the week prior. The change due to market conditions this week was positive again, at $720.3 million, versus $456.6 million last week. Total assets at U.S. loan funds are roughly $91.7 billion, of which $18.1 billion are in ETFs, or about 20% of the total.