BofA analysts said in a note Tuesday that last week, during which the S&P 500 was -1.4%, the firm's clients were net sellers of US equities.
The -$1.4bn in outflows represented the first outflow in three weeks, with BofA clients having sold both single stocks and ETFs, the analysts revealed.
While the firm's institutional clients led the way, hedge funds and private clients were also net sellers, while "Corp. client buybacks decelerated and have been tracking below typical seasonal trends since May after stronger-than-usual April trends."
"After finally seeing inflows two weeks ago, clients returned to selling small and mid-caps last week," they added. "As we noted in our recent SMID cap outlook update, the small-cap rally in early June was largely attributable to short covering per BofA's Short Analytics team's market commentary, while our positioning/flow data has suggested investors remain very underweight SMIDs."
According to BofA, so far this year, large caps are the only size segment to see inflows (and saw inflows last week), while annualized small+mid cap outflows YTD as a % of market cap are on track for record SMID outflows in the firm's post-GFC data history.