Historically, August is a challenging month for equity flows. But here we are two weeks in and so far, so good.

Global equity funds took in nearly $12 billion over the latest weekly reporting period, EPFR’s data showed.

The brings the MTD total to more than $21 billion. $21 billion of opportunistic dip-buying following a mini-panic to start the month.

Note from the chart that outflows are a rarity in 2024. This week’s haul was the 17th in a row.

The breakdown for the latest week showed $5.5 billion going to US-focused ETFs and mutual funds, which have now seen seven straight inflows. For the year, the haul for US stocks is up to $215 billion. Notably, investors were still buying Japanese stocks over the last week. In the two weeks following the largest one-day selloff for local shares since 1987, Japan-focused funds took in $5.6 billion.

The figure below shows you the equity flows breakdown for this year by region.

All told, global equity funds have seen a net $352 billion of inflows so far in 2024.

As ever, it’s important to note that the epochal active-to-passive shift is playing out unabated in the background. The split on that $352 billion figure is $604 billion to ETFs and $252 billion from mutual funds.

I mention this every, single week in my flows updates. BofA’s Michael Hartnett took some time this week to mention it too. Since Lehman, passive equity funds have seen some $5 trillion of inflows, while active funds watched $2.5 trillion hit the exits.

As the figure makes clear, this is an existential dynamic for humans tasked with beating benchmarks that only rise, and which can be tracked for fewer than 10bps in fees.

Elsewhere on the flows front, IG ran its inflow streak to 42 weeks, government bonds saw a 15th weekly inflow and cash (i.e. money market funds) took in another $28 billion.