Year-to-date flows into EPFR Global-tracked bond funds moved over the USD270bn mark during the week ending 18 August as the prospect of lacklustre growth in major economies pummelled the world’s equity markets.

Collective outflows from equity funds hit a six week high, with emerging market equity funds the only group to buck this trend.

Redemptions from US equity funds exceeded USD7bn, while investors pulled another USD880m out of Europe equity funds and Japan equity funds posted outflows for the 13th time in the past 15 weeks.

US municipal bond funds, real estate sector funds and emerging market bond funds continued to benefit from the US Federal Reserve’s shift back to an easing bias earlier in the month, although flows into emerging markets bond funds fell to an 11-week low and high yield bond funds had their worst week since early July.

Nonetheless, emerging market bond funds extended their YTD record inflows to USD32.8bn, which trounces the previous full-year record inflow of USD9.7bn set in 2005.

Overall, investors pulled USD7.49bn out of equity funds during the week and committed a net USD4.2bn to their bond fund counterparts.

The year-to-date inflows into bond funds are the extension of a remarkable two-year stretch for bond funds. In the two years ending 31 July all bond funds tracked by EPFR Global have seen mammoth inflows of USD486.4bn compared to outflows of USD153.3bn from all equity funds tracked. And going back to the start of 2009, bond funds have attracted inflows of USD560bn while investors have withdrawn nearly USD1trn from money market funds.

In the latest week money market funds recorded outflows of USD1.3bn, which snapped their longest inflow streak since the start of 2009.