Here’s what that much talked about influx of money from retail investors into stocks looks like going back six years using data from the Investment Company Institute as of the middle of the month.
This should be interesting to watch in 2013 since, the way everyone’s been talking about stocks and bonds so far, the general direction shown below is in the process of changing rather dramatically.
Others have surely pointed this out, but, as indicated in red, new money normally flows into stock funds at the beginning of the year. It’s happened every year in the chart above, even in 2010 through 2012 when there were outflows for these years overall.
As I recall, this data does not include ETFs which, if memory serves, are quite different than what is shown above in that stock ETF flows have risen in recent years. New data from the ICI will be out on Wednesday.