In “US Equity Flows: Robust Or Sputtering?” I recapped H1 equity fund flows on the way to suggesting that although US-focused ETFs and mutual funds are technically “on track” for their third-largest annual haul on record, that characterization relies on risky extrapolation.

If you haven’t perused the linked article, I encourage you to do so, but the overarching message is that even as US equities have seen a large influx this year in aggregate, the trend’s foreboding.

Specifically, out of a net $165 billion of inflows this year, the tally since mid-April is a mere $3 billion, give or take.

With that in mind, Deutsche Bank’s George Saravelos was out Tuesday with a short note snapshotting the same EPFR data, but broken down to reflect flows for foreign-domiciled funds, both on the equities side and in bonds.

The figures above, from Saravelos’s note, tell the story: Measured on a one-month rolling basis, flows into foreign-domiciled US equity and bond funds have flatlined, even if the trend’s at least improved on the bonds side.

“There is close to zero buying of US bonds and equities from foreign-domiciled funds over the last few months,” he wrote, adding that although US equities “may well be rallying due to domestic buying, foreigners just aren’t interested.”

In the same note, he reminded market participants that a buyer’s strike is something different from a fire sale. “Looking for evidence of dollar asset liquidation misses the point,” Saravelos said. “Foreigners don’t need to sell US assets to weaken the dollar, but merely to say ‘no thank you’ to buying more.”