Lipper-FMI fund flow data - Week ended March 20

Despite the fact that $HY spreads seem to have reached a floor around 390-400bp over swaps, underperforming €HY spreads over the last two weeks, $HY funds have continued to attract decent inflows. Almost $1.8bn of fresh money was added to $HY funds, bringing YtD net inflows above $10bn (see chart below). While a more dovish than expected Federal reserve has been bringing inflows in HY and IG funds (see chart opposite), investors continue to pull money out of loan funds, for the 18 th consecutive week : YtD , leveraged loan funds have post ed $$8.7bn net outflows, largely offsetting the inflows coming to HY bond funds. Finally, while EM debt funds posted net outflows again this week according to Lipper FMI, the figures coming from EPFR are totally opposite (admittedly, the perimeters are different), with $16.8bn YtD net inflows in EM debt funds according to the latter and only $1.2bn according to the former…