Equity Fund Inflows SPIKE UP $23 Billion

According to AMG Data Services, equity fund inflows increased by $23 Billion during the week of March 17th!

"Including ETF activity, Equity funds report net cash inflows totaling $22.937 billion in the week ended 3/19/08 with Domestic funds reporting net inflows of $24.197 billion and Non-domestic funds reporting net outflows of -$1.260 billion."

This week's data strikes me as an incredible number considering the trend (down) and size (small) of past AMG flows year to date (please see below). Mind you, we are still down $28.5 Billion in equity fund flows during 2008 BUT...it does seems to be a bit curious that this jump in equity fund flows would occur during the week of Bear Sterns' (BSC) epic collapse.

Are institutions slowly positioning themselves back into this market?

*Please note that there are only 3 examples of weekly equity fund inflows thus far in 2008...also please note the SIZE of those previous inflows.

Week of 3/17/08: $22.9 Billion (inflows)
Week of 3/12/08: $-1.4 Billion (outlows)
Week of 3/05/08: $-1.8 Billion (outflows)
Week of 2/27/08: $2.0 Billion (inflows)
Week of 2/20/08: $-4.2 Billion (outflows)
Week of 2/13/08: $-7.6 Billion (outflows)
Week of 2/06/08: $-7.9 Billion (outflows)
Week of 1/30/08: $-7.5 Billion (outflows)
Week of 1/23/08:$-13.6 Billion (outflows)
Week of 1/16/08: $7.3 Billion (inflows)
Week of 1/09/08: $-8.4 Billion (outflows)
Week of 1/02/08: $-8.3 Billion (outflows)

Data Courtesy: AMG Data Services: http://www.allstocks.com/markets/9amgdatext.htm