For the third week in row, investors were overall net purchasers of fund assets (including those of conventional funds and ETFs), injecting $13.9 billion for Lipper's fund-flows week ended February 19, 2020. Fund investors were net purchasers of taxable fixed income funds (+$7.9 billion), money market funds (+$6.3 billion), and municipal bond funds (+$1.8 billion), but they were net redeemers of equity funds (-$2.0 billion) this week.
Market Wrap-Up
For the Presidents' Day shortened fund-flows week ended February 19, 2020, investors generally pushed the U.S. market higher while keeping a keen eye on the deadly coronavirus, focusing on Q4 corporate earnings and healthy economic data. All three broadly followed U.S. indices witnessed market declines at the beginning of the fund-flows week on renewed coronavirus fears, but the NASDAQ and S&P 500 indices both posted multi-day record closes during the remainder of the week. The NASDAQ Composite Price Only Index (+0.94%) posted the strongest return of the broadly followed U.S. indices for the fund-flows week, followed by the S&P 500 Price Only Index (+0.20%), while the Dow Jones Industrial Average Price Only Index (-0.84%) posted the only negative return of the group after Apple (AAPL) issued a Q2 earnings warning related to the coronavirus. Overseas, the Shanghai Composite Price Only Index (+1.35%) posted the only plus-side return of the often-followed broad-based global indices, while the Nikkei 225 Price Only Index (-2.76%) suffered the largest decline.
On Thursday, February 13, all three major U.S. stock market indices closed lower on the day after news there were 15,152 new cases of the coronavirus in China. The increase was caused by a one-off change in methodology of diagnosing COVID-19 cases by the government. U.S. stocks might have also been impacted by news that January consumer prices rose modestly and initial jobless claims for the week ended February 8 edged up
