Vanguard Tops January Fund Charts; Industry Inflows at $42 Billion, Says FRC

Stock and bond funds experienced net inflows of estimated $42.5 billion in January, reported the Boston-based Financial Research Corp. on Wednesday.  That’s up 54% from flows of $27.6 billion in the same month last year and a huge increase of 490% from December’s flows of $7.2 billion.

Equity funds had net inflows of $26.6 billion, followed by the international-global equity funds with $13.0 billion in net flows. In the December 2010, funds into these categories were $8.9 billion and $16 billion respectively.

A year ago, equity funds experienced net outflows of $15 billion in the month, while international-global equity funds grew by nearly $13.5 billion.

The Powershares QQQ Trust 1 attracted $2.5 billion to lead the fund sales chart, according the research group.  (FRC estimated data includes ETFs and excludes money-market funds.)

By Morningstar category, the large-blend fund group led in January 2011, with $7.1 billion in net inflows. It experienced outflows of $15.1 billion in January 2010. Bank-loan funds had inflows of $6.3 billion in the first month of 2011, while high-yield bonds attracted $5 billion.

Natural-resources funds drew $3.1 billion, and broad-commodities funds had $2.1 billion in January inflows.

Target-date funds’ net inflows (net of proprietary funds of funds) were $1.2 billion, while short-term bonds experienced a similar level of fund gains.

Fund Families