For the week ending Nov. 21, inflows into municipal bond funds that report weekly were $1.1 billion down from the originally reported $1.8 billion. The discrepancy came from the Goldman Sachs Short Duration Tax Free series funds. The A-class ticker GSDTX moved 70% of its assets into the I-share class ticker GSDUX and the inflows were recorded but the outflows were not. The GSDTX saw a drop in assets to $320 million from $1.1 billion while the GSDUX saw an increase in assets to $3.87 billion from $3.1 billion, Lipper analysts said Tuesday.
A share exchange in a large short term fund was reported as a $902 million inflow with no corresponding outflow from the fund shares being exchanged, wrote Chris Mauro at RBC Capital Markets. This accounting issue has been corrected and total muni fund inflows for the week now total $2.2 billion while outflows are reported at $1.15 billion for a net inflow total of $1.07 billion.
He added, We note that this is still a significant level of inflows for municipals and is the highest net inflow total since early August. Long term funds continue to draw significant investor interest, accounting for 60% of all municipal bond fund flows last week.
Indeed, long-term funds saw $642 million of inflows this week, bringing the year to date total to $23.6 billion, said Peter DeGroot at JPMorgan. High Yield funds saw $256 million of inflows, bringing the year to date inflows to $10 billion. Intermediate funds saw $82 million of inflows, recording $12 billion in inflows year to date.
