U.S. Stock Fund Outflows May Surpass Record

Outflows from U.S. stock funds may surpass 2008’s record of $96.7 billion, according to Morningstar Inc.

Morningstar’s estimated U.S. mutual fund asset flows through November show U.S.-stock funds shed another $14.1 billion, with particularly strong outflows from growth-oriented offerings. Active equity funds with lower expenses experienced slower outflows than higher-fee funds. Within the U.S.-stock broad asset class, funds rated Gold, Silver or Bronze by Morningstar exhibited slower rates of decline than neutral- or negative-rated funds.

Investors continued to shift assets to fixed-income funds, as open-end taxable-bond funds and municipal-bond funds collected $17.9 billion and $5.2 billion, respectively.

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Additional highlights of the report include:

  • Intermediate-term bond funds led all categories in terms of inflows for the sixth month in a row, garnering $8.3 billion in new assets; 
  • Investors redeemed $3.6 billion from high-yield bond funds in November, a category that has seen inflows of $24.4 billion so far this year, while continuing to add to bank-loan funds. These offerings took in new assets of $1.8 billion to bring the year-to-date total to $9.2 billion; and 
  • Inflows to emerging-markets bond funds slowed to $882 million in November. However, the category—which began the year with assets of just $46.3 billion—has taken in $20.0 billion year-to-date. Diversified emerging-markets were the lone bright spot within the international-stock asset class, collecting inflows of more than $1.1 billion.

The complete report is available here.

IRS Issues 2012 Cumulative List

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has issued the 2012 Cumulative List of Changes in Plan Qualification Requirements.

Plans using this Cumulative List will primarily be single employer individually designed defined contribution (DC) plans and single employer individually designed defined benefit (DB) plans that are in Cycle C, and § 414(d) governmental plans (including governmental multiemployer or governmental multiple employer plans) that choose to file during Cycle C.    

The IRS said it will not consider in its review of any determination letter application for the submission period that begins February 1, 2013, any guidance issued after October 1, 2012; statutes enacted after October 1, 2012; qualification requirements first effective in 2014 or later; or statutory provisions that are first effective in 2013, for which there is no guidance identified in the notice.    

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However, the agency noted, in order to be qualified, a plan must comply with all relevant qualification requirements, not just those on the 2012 Cumulative List.  

Notice 2012-76 is at http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/n-12-76.pdf.

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