With all the talk of record (or near record) inflows to US equity funds, and with Trump-inspired “animal spirits” coursing through the veins of everyone from PMs to meme “coiners,” it’d be natural to suspect positioning’s stretched in risk assets.

As it turns out, though, it’s not. Or not dangerously so anyway, and not necessarily where it counts.

“Retail is absolutely jamming into this slow melt-up in US equities as per the current record AUM in leveraged ETFs [but] as it stands now, I don’t see a massive source of institutional de-risking flow,” Nomura’s Charlie McElligott said Tuesday, noting that positioning would have to get “meaningfully longer” to get him “crazy nervous.”

The table on the left, above, gives you some perspective (click to enlarge). Yes, fund flows and futures positioning is 100%ile, but neither systematics collectively, nor long/short funds, nor macro funds nor mutual funds are anywhere near “11,” so to speak. The figure on the right provides some helpful historical perspective for systematics.

For McElligott to get worried about de-leveraging, he’d need to see “far more upside chasing, and definitely more systematic exposure than we see now,” he wrote, in the same Tuesday note.

Currently, positioning’s a “mixed bag,” he went on, juxtaposing “a lot of futures beta and biblical fund flows” with relatively light positioning from vol-sensitives, and a discretionary crowd he described as “slow to adjust.”

So, if you’re wondering whether we’re out of melt-up fuel, the answer’s (a qualified) “no.”