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High-Grade Bond-Fund Outflows Hit $35.6 Billion, Smashing Record

The sum blows through the previous record $7.3 billion outflow from last week, according to Refinitiv Lipper.

High-Grade Bond-Fund Outflows Hit $35.6 Billion, Smashing Record
A machine counts a stack of U.S. 100 dollar banknotes. (Photographer: Paul Yeung/Bloomberg)

(Bloomberg) -- Investors withdrew an unprecedented $35.6 billion from U.S. funds that buy up investment-grade debt this week as the global market rout from the spreading coronavirus intensified. At the same time, a record $249 billion poured into U.S. government money-market funds.

The withdrawals from corporate high-grade debt blow through the previous record $7.3 billion outflow from last week, according to Refinitiv Lipper. Funds that buy junk bonds lost $2.9 billion in the five business days ended March 18, while leveraged loan investors withdrew about $3.5 billion.

Credit markets had another volatile week amid a worldwide meltdown in risk assets. Risk premiums on investment-grade bonds reached levels not seen since the financial crisis, while junk bond yields breached 10% for the first time in more than eight years.

”The number is off the charts, but so is the magnitude of this market correction,” Dorian Garay, a portfolio manager at NN Investment Partners, said in reference to the investment-grade bond outflows.

High-Grade Bond-Fund Outflows Hit $35.6 Billion, Smashing Record

Despite the turmoil, investment-grade companies including Walt Disney Co. and PepsiCo Inc. seized moments of relative calm to issue new debt. Many firms selling bonds this week were doing so to reduce their reliance on the commercial paper market, where prices have risen rapidly amid a broad market seize-up. Lipper fund flow data covers investment-grade funds that manage about $1.3 trillion in assets.

“The flows into IG have been so steady over the past eight years, that it was like the farmer coming with a daily handful of grain to feed the turkey in the back yard,” said Gregory Staples, head of fixed income at DWS Investment Management. “Today what the farmer had in his hand was an axe.”

Investment-grade bonds are poised for another one of the largest weekly losses on record as spreads widen to crisis levels. The three most recent daily outflows from high-grade funds and exchange-traded funds are the largest on record, Bank of America Corp. strategists led by Hans Mikkelsen said in a report Wednesday.

Money-Market Funds

The Federal Reserve stepped in on Tuesday, announcing that it would reintroduce the Commercial Paper Funding Facility, a measure it used during the financial crisis to shore up short-term funding markets.

Total assets in government money-market funds rose to an all-time high of $3.09 trillion in the week ended March 18, according to Investment Company Institute data that stretches back to 2007.

The prior weekly inflows record of $176 billion was set in September 2008 during the financial crisis caused by the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

Prime money-market funds, which tend to invest in higher-risk assets such as commercial paper, saw outflows of $85.4 billion, the largest move since October 2016, according to ICI. Total assets fell to $713 billion.

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.