Rich get richer while T. Rowe keeps it active
Vanguard Group, Fidelity Investments and T. Rowe Price led the 10 largest institutional money managers in net mutual fund flows during August. Fidelity led the cohort with $2.1 billion in August net flows, followed by Vanguard's $1.7 billion; T. Rowe was a close third with $1.6 billion. U.S. managers as a whole had net flows of $401 million in August, and $134 billion total year-to-date.
As a percentage of beginning-of-year assets, T. Rowe's net flows over the first two-thirds of the year represented 12.4% of their end of 2018 mutual fund assets, ahead of Fidelity's 10% growth and Vanguard's 2.8%. Most notable about T. Rowe's growth is that it was almost entirely in actively managed equity funds. Vanguard's growth, while low, still represents a forward push of some $1.1 trillion in pooled funds.
The bulk of Vanguard and Fidelity's inflows came from its broad U.S. equity market index funds, while the PIMCO Income Fund accumulated $16.8 billion more in net flows so far this year.