Investors snap up European equity funds, but flee from US funds for a third straight week

(Reuters) -European equity funds attracted the largest weekly inflow in over a year in the week ending April 30, while U.S. funds saw outflows for a third straight week on continued uncertainty around the impact of tariffs on global economic growth.

Investors bought a net $14.64 billion worth of European equity funds, the most in any week since mid-March 2024, data from LSEG Lipper showed, while investments into Asian funds totalled $6.68 billion.

A net $15.56 billion was divested from U.S. funds.

Data from the U.S. this week showed that the economy contracted by 0.3% in the first quarter, swamped by a flood of imports as businesses raced to avoid higher tariffs.

There were outflows from sectoral funds for a fifth consecutive week, totalling $166 million. The gold and precious metals sectoral funds saw $759 million in outflows while investors divested a net $374 million from metals and mining sector funds.

At the same time, investors pumped $4.73 billion into global bond funds, extending net purchases into a second successive week.

Global high-yield bond funds saw a net $3.58 billion in inflows, after five straight weeks of net selling. Global short-term bond funds witnessed net purchases of $1.56 billion.

But global money market funds saw net sales of $26.06 billion after witnessing about $15.26 billion worth of net inflows during the previous week.

Gold and precious metals commodity funds registered their first weekly net sales in 12 weeks, with investors pulling out a marginal $4.4 million.

Data covering 29,589 emerging market funds showed that equity funds drew in their first weekly inflows in five weeks, of $892 million. Investors also poured a net of $690 million into emerging market bond funds.

(Reporting by Gaurav Dogra and Patturaja Murugaboopathy in Bengaluru; Editing by Rachna Uppal)