Of course, last year finished badly; for all of 2002, equity funds had a $27.7 billion net outflow of assets.
Several sectors posted massive outflows: Energy redeemed 11.9% of assets, industrials redeemed 8.1% of assets and materials redeemed 7.6% of assets.
"Within this total, UK mutual fund assets were £9.5bn, down from £10.6bn after net outflows of £300m, and international mutual fund assets were £600m, down from £1bn after net outflows of £300m," the company said.
Global equity ETFs redeemed $332 million on Tuesday, bringing the outflow since the previous Tuesday to $2.4 billion 2.22% of assets).
Global equity ETFs redeemed $576 million on Thursday, bringing the outflow from Tuesday through Thursday to $1.3 billion 1.22% of assets).
And Tobias Levkovich, Citigroup's chief United States equity strategist, points out that large-cap stock funds sit on a bigger mountain of assets to begin with — so larger outflows aren't necessarily troubling.
The only sector losing more than 1% of assets was consumer discretionary, which posted an outflow equal to 4.0% of assets.
Under the current rules, large banks have to hold a pool of assets they can theoretically sell quickly to cover any outflows that occur in a turbulent period in the markets.
According to AMG Data Services, investors pulled $10.5 billion of assets out of the fund company from January through August -- the worst outflow among the 25 major fund companies.
The only Morningstar style/capitalization categories posting outflows during this past week were mid-cap blend and large-cap value, which redeemed 0.9% and 0.1% of assets, respectively.
