Stocks Party Like It’s 1999: Lipper

Other findings:

• The Domestic Sector Equity Funds and Global Sector Equity Funds macro-classifications had six of the seven best performing classifications, according to Tom Roseen, head of research services for Refinitiv Lipper and author of the report.

• The Precious Metals Equity Funds had the strongest return in the equity universe with an almost 58% return.

• Among the USDE funds, the best returns were from Equity Leverage Funds (+43.3%) and Small-Cap Growth Funds (+32.5%).

• U.S. Diversified Growth funds did the best in total return at 30.2%, beating out Core funds (+21%) and Value funds (+18%), small-cap with a 32.5% return. Small/Mid-cap growth funds did best for international diversified funds for the quarter at 22.4%.

• Energy MLP funds performed the best of Domestic Sector Equity funds in Q2 with a 40% return followed by Consumer Services at 34%. Natural Resources and Science & Technology funds both came in around 33%.

• For World Sector Equity funds, Precious Metals funds were followed by Global Science/Technology Funds at 36%.

Market Flows

Preliminary fund flows for the quarter showed mutual fund investors were net purchasers, injecting an roughly $254.6 billion into conventional funds (excluding ETFs). That said, despite returns, domestic equity funds were net sellers (-$95 billion).

Taxable bond funds had inflows of $76 billion, with munis bringing in a net $9.3 billion for the second quarter. Money market funds continued their growth for the eighth straight quarter with net inflows of $264 billion.

ETFs had net purchases of roughly $104 billion, of which $21 billion were equity ETFs, $80 billion went into taxable fixed income ETFs and $3.7 billion into municipal debt ETFs.

— Related on ThinkAdvisor:

• 12 Top-Performing ETFs in First Half of 2020
• Putting Past Performance of Active Mutual Funds in Perspective
• How Optimistic Should We Be on U.S. Economy?