By Harry Robertson
LONDON (Reuters) – British buyers piled into U.S. fairness funds on the quickest price in no less than 9 years in February as tech shares drove American markets to file highs, fund community Calastone mentioned on Tuesday.
Simply over 2.5 billion kilos ($3.17 billion) flowed into North American fairness funds final month, Calastone mentioned, probably the most on the corporate’s nine-year file.
UK buyers have been sucked into a strong rally that has been pushed by pleasure about synthetic intelligence and the Federal Reserve doubtlessly quickly slicing rates of interest.
It has pushed the U.S. S&P 500 and Nasdaq inventory indices previous their late 2021 and early 2022 peaks to new file highs.
“Danger is again on with a vengeance,” mentioned Edward Glyn, head of worldwide markets at Calastone.
“The U.S. inventory market has soared by a fifth since late October, driving accelerating fund inflows ever since. The rally has been pushed by know-how shares specifically.”
British buyers stay unenthusiastic about home shares, nevertheless, with 633 million kilos flowing out of UK funds in February, placing 2024 on observe to be the fourth straight yr of outflows.
“The UK inventory market has notched a contact increased… however nothing can persuade UK buyers so as to add capital to their residence market,” Glyn mentioned.
Traders continued to purchase into cash market funds, which attracted 78 million kilos, though that was nicely beneath the 400 million pound month-to-month common seen in 2023.
Bond funds took in 329 million kilos, their greatest month since June 2023.
Calastone’s figures, which primarily observe retail investor selections, usually are not complete, however give an excellent sense of UK flows.
($1 = 0.7885 pound)
(Reporting by Harry Robertson; enhancing by Jonathan Oatis)
