401(k) plan participants increased their investment transfers in March, according to the Hewitt 401(k) index, which tracks the daily transfer activity of almost 1.5 million employees with $80 billion in collective assets. The month saw the highest amount of daily transfer activity since July, more average daily net activity and more above-normal transfer activity days.
The assets moved to fixed income on each of the five high-transfer-activity days in March, according to the index. And money moved toward fixed income on 73% of the days in the month, the second highest percentage of fixed-income transfer activity days since August 1998. The highest level of transfer activity was March 22 — the day after the Federal Reserve cut interest rates a half percentage point and the day the Nasdaq composite dropped 3.68% — with a Hewitt index reading of 2.93. A typical activity index reading is 1.0.
