2024’s on track to be a banner year for money market fund inflows.

But you already knew that. Or at least I hope you did. Because that’s (still) the key flows story.

As discussed here, MMFs are annualizing around $1.2 trillion of inflows. It’s still early, but assuming the final haul comes anywhere near that, 2024 would be the second-best year on record for money fund flows behind only 2023’s enormous $1.35 trillion.

Focusing specifically on US money funds, the YTD intake’s just short of $225 billion after last week’s $70.5 billion haul on ICI’s data.

The figure above gives you some context (or not if you think this is apples-to-oranges) by way of YTD flows to US equities.

After a second consecutive weekly inflow, US equity-focused ETFs and mutual funds have taken in $82.3 billion so far in 2024 on EPFR’s data.

As the figure above, from BofA’s Michael Hartnett, shows, US equity funds are on track for their best flows year ever outside of 2021’s “stimmy”-fueled “everything bubble.”

Globally, equity funds took in $156 billion in Q1, split between $99 billion to DM funds (that includes the US) and $57 billion to EM. Tech funds are pacing for $73 billion of inflows, easily the most for any year on record.

Perhaps even more remarkable than the MMF inflows (if not as amenable to flashy headlines) is the ongoing influx to IG credit. By “ongoing,” I mean high grade bond funds have seen 23 consecutive weekly inflows, on the way to annualizing half a trillion.

Suffice to say all that issuance (i.e., Q1’s supply deluge) appears to be finding ready buyers (i.e., demand).

Panning out to the editorial that accompanied BofA’s summary of Q1 flows, Hartnett described an “ABB” rally — an “Anything But Bonds” bull market.

There’s a “buyers’ strike in government bonds,” he wrote, citing a new era of “higher inflation driven by fiscal excess, deglobalization [and] war.”

Hartnett added a caveat: “The biggest Q2 tactical risk to the consensus ‘ABB’ bull [is] a decline in US payrolls when the cost of living [remains] high, signalling the Fed needs (not just wants) to cut rates.”

Another barnburner jobs report suggests that risk isn’t materializing. Not yet, anyway.