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BOFA CLIENTS HAVEN'T BEEN POSITIONING FOR RECESSION

BofA Securities equity and quant strategist Jill Carey Hall says that last week, with the S&P 500 index .SPX sliding around 1.5%, clients were net sellers (-$2.9 billion) for a second week in a row.

As was the case the prior week, clients sold single stocks, while they snapped up ETFs. With this, institutional and hedge fund clients were sellers for the second and seventh straight weeks, respectively.

"Private clients bought the dip (their fourth-largest weekly inflow on record), with inflows into both stocks and ETFs. This group has been a net buyer of equities for 16 weeks, the longest start-of-year buying streak in our data since '08," writes Hall in her note.

She adds that corporate client buybacks slowed and have now been tracking below typical seasonal levels for the fourth week.

Hall says that clients sold stocks in six of the 11 GICS sectors, led by tech (for a second week), followed by industrials.

She notes that in aggregate, clients were net buyers of cyclical sectors vs net sellers of defensive sectors, suggesting to her that they haven't been positioning for a recession.

Energy and financials experienced the largest inflows.

As for ETFs, Hall says clients bought growth/value ETFs and large/small cap ETFs, but offloaded blend, broad market and mid cap ETFs.

Most sectors saw ETF outflows, led by consumer discretionary.

Tech, communication services, utilities and energy ETFs garnered inflows.

(Terence Gabriel)

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