Six of the 10 largest institutional active fund managers experienced negative outflows in October. Only John Hancock's net flows were above its 2018 monthly average. PIMCO's active funds saw a net $2 billion leave, the majority of which came out of the PIMCO Short-Term bond fund. J.P. Morgan also experienced large outflows in October relative to the rest of 2018, but those outflows were more dispersed, primarily among the manager's multiple U.S. equity offerings.
The largest U.S. active manager, American Funds, had net inflows in October of about $2 billion. That might look significant relative to its peers, but it was still a little more than half of its 2018 monthly average.
In a month that saw U.S. and global equities rapidly decline, institutional active U.S. equity managers had net outflows of $17.8 billion, while their non-U.S. equity peers had net outflows of $9.5 billion. Taxable bond funds had $12 billion in net outflows.
October erased a year of positive cash flows for U.S. equity funds, which have now had a net $14.6 billion leave through Oct. 31. Non-U.S. equity funds were still up a net $26.7 billion in 2018, and taxable bond funds were up a net $56.2 billion.
