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Mark Hulbert
Jan. 13, 2010, 12:01 a.m. EST · Recommend (4) · Post:
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By Mark Hulbert, MarketWatch
ANNANDALE, Va. (MarketWatch) - Maybe investors haven't become too enthusiastic after all.
Many contrarians -- myself included -- have worried in recent sessions that bullishness has approached dangerously high levels. ( Read Jan. 6 commentary.)
But recently released fund-flow data for the month of December report a different story entirely: Mutual-fund investors, on balance, remain skeptical of the stock market's monster rally of the last nine months, betting that it will not continue.
In fact, according to TrimTabs Investment Research, December was the fifth month in a row in which mutual fund investors pulled more money out of domestic equity mutual funds than they put in. The month's net outflow came to $7.2 billion, bringing the total since the beginning of March to $29 billion, according to TrimTabs.
It is quite unusual for mutual fund investors to have reacted to the rally in this way. The normal pattern is for fund investors to pour increasing amounts of money into the stock market as it rises, and to pull money out at an accelerating pace as the market declines.
By the way, don't think that fund investors' recent behavior is the result of their transferring funds to the increasingly popular world of exchange-traded funds. For all of 2009, according to TrimTabs, there was a net withdrawal from domestic equity ETFs too.
To find any precedent for mutual fund investors' recent behavior, you have to go back to the 1970s, when -- in the wake of the punishing 1973-74 bear market -- they did the same thing for many years. In effect, they were so traumatized by that bear market that it took them years before being willing to put their faith in stocks again.
In fact, according to data from the Investment Company Institute, equity mutual funds experienced net outflows in every calendar year following that bear market until 1982, some eight years later.
These eight years after the end of the 1973-74 bear market are an ominous parallel for today's stock market, since the Dow Jones Industrial Average /quotes/comstock/10w!i:dji/delayed (INDU 10,670, +42.85, +0.40%) in 1982 was no higher than it was in 1972. And, in inflation-adjusted terms, it was a lot lower. This in turn suggests that the bullish significance of mutual fund investors' recent skepticism is strictly for the short term.
The bottom line? The mutual fund flow data remain a bright spot in an otherwise bleak sentiment picture. But that bright spot may be little more than a silver lining within a very dark cloud.
Mark Hulbert is the founder of Hulbert Financial Digest in Annandale, Va. He has been tracking the advice of more than 160 financial newsletters since 1980.
- BearFund | 1:47 a.m. Today1:47 a.m. Jan. 13, 2010
Kraft Foods Inc., in its tireless effort to buy London-based Cadbury, has revealed new-found powers to impress skeptical Cadbury shareholders: Higher profits.
16 min ago2:27 p.m. Jan. 13, 2010
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