Lipper Insight

We are now at that point in the year when investors constantly hear about the virtues of selling in May and going away until fall. This is not unfounded advice; it is generally accepted that the U.S. equity markets underperform during the summer. Our Thomson Reuters colleagues at AlphaNow recently looked at the historical returns [...]

Corporate bond yields as measured by Moody’s are at levels not seen since the late 1950’s.  And yields on both Aaa and Baa have fallen 300 basis points (bps) or more since the middle of the last recession.  CDS spreads (not shown) are below 100 bps for investment grade paper with maturities between one year and [...]

In the wake of the recent bombings in Boston, we looked into where mutual funds and ETFs were managed. Surprisingly, New York was not the top location for these asset managers’ headquarters.

Falling gold prices have stirred up a lot of emotions among dedicated gold investors, but few investors have had their feelings—not to mention their account balances—hurt as badly this year as mutual fund owners. Funds in Lipper’s Precious Metals Equity group have fared far worse than have actual holders of the yellow metal as investors [...]

Although we have seen some spectacular performance for stock funds this year, a possibly bigger focus has been investors’ pouring near-record amounts of cash into the products. At over $80 billion net, equity mutual funds have experienced their strongest quarterly take since Q1 2000. Many analysts talk of a great rotation out of bonds; others [...]

This week’s chart plots the best perforning Alernative Credit fund in the U.S during the past 3 years.  It also has the best risk-adjusted returns so is ideal to use as a dampener of volatility in an investor’s portfolio.   

Despite ongoing concern about Cyprus, Greece, and other European countries, investors bid up equities in Q1 2013 (+7.99%) to the second best Q1 showing since Q1 1998 (+12.04%). Of course, Q1 2012’s return (+12.22%) was the best in at least 20 years. Equity Funds’ First Quarter Returns (%), 1993-2013 The questions begging to be answered [...]

That disturbing noise you hear is the sound of millions of bond fund owners collectively wringing their hands over concerns that rising interest rates will crush their portfolios. Year to date, yields on the benchmark ten-year Treasury are up, from 1.86% to 1.96%, and the total return on the Barclays US Aggregate Index is down [...]

There has been a lot of focus lately on the strong inflows for U.S. equity funds so far this year—roughly $104.0 billion through March 13. While much of the attention within the equity group has been on inflows to U.S. domestic mutual funds, a group that had seen over $400 billion in net redemptions between [...]

Equity mutual fund investors withdrew money from their investments last year—well over $100 billion by our count—and those outflows were driven almost entirely by investors in direct-sold and advisor-sold products. Investors who owned equity mutual funds in those channels sold nearly $195 billion of their funds during the year. In contrast, investors who owned equity [...]