Keeping Track: cashing out mutual funds

Investors steer clear of stock-based funds

For the first time in 2-1/2 years, more money was pulled out of stock mutual funds than put into them during a one month period. Stock funds had a net outflow of $3.1 billion in February, according to the Investment Company Institute (ICI).

Investors yanked their money out of aggressive-growth and overseas stock funds. They did, however, put more money into growth and growth-and-income funds.

The overall decline "is typical of an environment of prolonged stock-price declines," the ICI said in a press release. Investors slowed their pace of new purchases. Stock funds, for example, had a 30 percent decline in new sales in February.

(c) Copyright 2001. The Christian Science Monitor