As many of you know, the primary aim of the Ultimate Stock-Pickers concept is to scour through the holdings, purchases, and sales of top investors that we admire, mining this data to surface stocks that are drawing the interest of these managers. Given the breadth of our own equity research, we feel we are in a unique position to cross-check the activity of these Ultimate Stock-Pickers with the valuation work and opinions of Morningstar's own cadre of stock analysts, with the end goal being to uncover investment ideas that investors might find useful.
With more than two thirds of our top managers having reported their stock holdings for the most recent period, we're beginning to get a good feel for where our Ultimate Stock Pickers were putting money to work during the second quarter. It should be noted, though, that unlike the first quarter of 2011, which saw more than $25 billion flow into U.S. stock funds (and close to $15 billion flow into international stock funds), investors reversed course during the second quarter, pulling money out of equities at an accelerating rate. With many mangers facing increased redemptions, there was a bit more selling activity during the second quarter than we've seen in past periods. We expect this to be the case during the third quarter as well, given the increased volatility in the global stock markets and the dramatic increase in outflows seen from the U.S. and international stock funds during the month of July alone.
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