Investors continued to pour money into municipal bond mutual funds this past week.
For the week ended Feb. 29, muni bond funds saw $357 million of inflows from funds that report their flows weekly, according to Lipper FMI. That represented a decline from the week ending Feb. 22, when there were net inflows of $883 million.
There have been 13 straight week of positive flows, and 24 weeks out of the past 26.
For the week, muni bonds outperformed Treasuries at the 10-year mark and farther out along the curve. But yields for both munis and Treasuries were weaker, overall, as volume in the primary jumped and economic news on the week struck mostly positive notes.
Inflows for muni bond funds have been strong for more than four months. One year earlier, the picture for fund flows was quite a different one. Then, the industry saw money empty from muni funds in massive proportions.
And between mid-November 2010 and `early June 2011, money exited funds typically by more than $1 billion a week. At its worst, investors in weekly reporting funds withdrew more than $4 billion in the week of Jan. 19, 2011.
This past week, assets for funds that report their flows weekly rose for the fourth straight week to $288.1 billion from $286.4 billion the previous week.
The value of the holdings for weekly reporting funds continues to swing. This past week they increased by $972 million. The week before, they had decreased by $51.4 million.
The four-week moving average for all municipal bond mutual funds that report their flows weekly saw an $843 million inflow, down slightly from a recalculated $885 million gain the week before.
High-yield muni funds also saw another week of inflows, though they continued to fall from the prior week. Still, they have been positive for 12 of the past 13 weeks.
Funds that report weekly saw inflows of $12.2 million, Lipper said. The previous week, high-yield funds reported inflows of $183 million.
Assets for high-yield funds that report their flows weekly rose to $37.31 billion, up from $36.73 billion the previous week.
The value of the holdings for weekly reporting funds rose by $257.2 million. Last week, they increased by just $25.3 million.
The four-week moving average for all high-yield muni bond funds that report their flows weekly was a $138 million inflow, down from a recalculated $181 million inflow the week before.
