MARKETS SPECTATOR: Cash converters

In a research report from Deutsche Bank, they've noted that the combination of fund managers covering fiscal cliff underweights and $63 billion in equity inflows helped fuel the 5 per cent rally in January.

Long short equity funds, macro funds and hybrids are closer to neutral in weighting but mutual funds remain very underweight.

"The current pace of $100 billion in equity inflows over the last 10 weeks has surpassed those prior periods when flows returned to equities. Bond funds are also getting moderate inflows as a normal allocation of savings, mainly going to emerging markets and high yield. Money market funds are still sitting on $90 billion of cumulative inflows since October, after cash holdings stayed flat through most of 2012,” Deutsche Bank reported.

Some portion of the $31 billion in money market outflows likely found their way to equities and bonds the last three weeks, the broker said.

Given this, Deutsche Bank believes the continued reallocation out of cash could help sustain the torrid pace of equity (and bond) inflows, like it did in early 2012.



Source: Deutsche Bank



Source: Deutsche Bank

As you can see in the above charts, both the pace of which funds are flowing towards equities and also the amount of money still parked in money market funds are likely to offer significant support for equity markets for some time to come.