Institutional investors might be thinking locally, but increasingly they’re investing globally, according to Casey, Quirk & Associates.
The Darien, Conn.-based money management consultant’s latest institutional product review shows global equity strategies garnering $27 billion in net inflows during 2006, a sharp contrast to the $91 billion in net outflows for U.S. equity products. Emerging markets equity and international equity gathered assets as well, with inflows of $7.1 billion and $6 billion, respectively.
Growing reliance on exchange-traded funds and derivatives for index exposure might partly explain last year’s heavy outflow from U.S. large-cap core index strategies — $42 billion — but U.S. midcap and small-cap strategies also saw respective outflows of $3 billion and $34 billion, Yariv Itah, a partner with the firm, said. U.S. large-cap value and growth strategies were the exceptions to the rule, with inflows of $12.9 billion and $8 billion, respectively. For the year, the median U.S. large-cap value equity manager returned 19%, trouncing the 8.1% return for the median large-cap growth manager.
On the fixed-income side, long-duration strategies took in $10 billion, a sign of growing interest in liability-driven investing, said Mr. Itah. High-yield bond strategies suffered the worst drubbing, with net outflows of $15.2 billion. As with equities, investors were looking abroad for their fixed-income allocations as well: global and international bonds enjoyed net inflows of $16.7 billion, and emerging market debt took in $4.8 billion.
