Bank of America clients sold the stock-market rally last week but were buying exchange-traded funds across styles in a tough year for equities, according to BofA Global Research.
The bank’s clients were net sellers of U.S. stocks for a third straight week, BofA equity and quant strategists said in a research note dated June 27. They sold as the S&P 500 SPX rallied more than 6% last week, “although outflows were ‘muted,'” the strategists said. BofA clients were “defensive,” contributing to utilities and staples while selling stocks in the other nine of 11 sectors, according to the note. Tech suffered the biggest outflows in the week through June 24, while ETFs attracted the biggest inflows, a chart in the report shows.
“We don’t think Energy’s outperformance is over,” they wrote. “It continues to rank favorably in our work, offers attractive inflation-protected yield and remains underowned by active managers.” U.S. stocks were trading down Tuesday afternoon amid fresh economic data showing a drop in consumer confidence, with the Dow DJIA off 1.3%, the S&P 500 down 1.8% and the Nasdaq COMP sliding 2.7%, FactSet data show, at last check.