The European mutual funds industry enjoyed overall net inflows of €38.1bn into long-term mutual funds for June 2014, which drove up the net inflows for the first half of 2014 to € 244.1bn. The net inflows for June were driven mainly by flows into bond funds (+€ 19.2bn), followed by mixed-asset funds (+€ 12.1bn) and equity products (+ €6.0bn). Also, property products (+€ 0.8bn) as well as alternative/hedge funds (+€ 0.5bn) saw net inflows, while commodity funds (-€ 0.001bn) and funds from the other peer group (-€ 0.5bn) faced outflows.

In addition to the long-term mutual funds, enhanced money market products enjoyed net inflows of € 0.3bn, while money market funds themselves faced net outflows of € 10.9bn for June. Despite these outflows, money market funds still posted net inflows of € 6.0bn for the first half of 2014.

With regard to long-term funds, asset allocation products (+ € 6.6bn) were the best selling asset class, followed by bonds flexible (+€ 3.1bn) and bonds global currencies (+€ 2.9bn) as well as equities Europe (+€ 2.9bn) and mixed-asset balanced (+€ 2.7bn). At the other end of the spectrum equities global (-€ 3.4bn) suffered net outflows, bettered by bonds GBP corporate investment-grade (-€ 2.6bn) as well as bonds USD corporate high yield (-€ 1.8bn), guaranteed funds (-€ 1bn), and equities Germany (-€ 0.8bn).

Early indicators for July activity

While the focus of this report is to summarise comprehensive data on mutual fund flows across Europe for June (see above and over), there is also an opportunity to provide some early indicators of provisional flows data for July. Looking at Luxembourg- and Ireland-domiciled funds, mixed-asset funds—with projected net inflows of around € 9.3 bn—should be the best selling asset class for July, followed by equity funds (+€ 7.2 bn). Even though these numbers are estimates, it seems that mixed-asset products are becoming European investors’ favorite for 2014.