Morningstar Reports U.S. Mutual Fund and ETF Asset Flows Through February 2010

CHICAGO, March 15 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Morningstar, Inc. (Nasdaq: MORN), a leading provider of independent investment research, today reported estimated U.S. mutual fund and exchange-traded fund asset flows through February 2010. Although investors poured $30.3 billion into mutual funds overall in February, $3.7 billion exited U.S. stock funds, marking the fifth outflow in the last six months. ETF inflows reached $4.6 billion in February after steep outflows of roughly $16.7 billion in January. The U.S. ETF industry closed out February with about $764.6 billion in total net assets, up roughly 2.4% from $746.9 billion in December and up 67.9% from $455.5 billion during the same period in 2009.

Additional highlights from the report on mutual funds:

Excluding domestic-stock funds, every other major asset class took in assets in February, led by taxable-bond funds with inflows of $19.8 billion.
Templeton Global Bond has taken in more than $14.5 billion in assets over the past 12 months, second only to PIMCO Total Return in bond inflows. PIMCO Short-Term Bond has also seen significant growth over the same period, and its total net assets are now $10.6 billion.
Many of the fastest-growing new funds that have launched over the past six months are associated with target-date funds, notably Fidelity Series Commodity Strategy, which is one of the underlying funds in Fidelity's Freedom Target-Date series, and Fidelity Series Inflation-Protected Bond Index.
JPMorgan and T. Rowe Price began 2010 on a strong note, with year-to-date inflows of $5.3 billion and $3.8 billion, respectively.

Additional highlights from the report on ETFs:

While investors pulled money from domestic-stock mutual funds in February, domestic-stock ETFs topped all ETF asset classes for February inflows, led by SPDRs SPY with roughly $1.5 billion in net inflows.
Investors withdrew about $2.9 billion from international-stock ETFs in February, the most among the broad asset classes and the first monthly outflow the asset class has experienced since August 2009.
Commodity ETFs saw net outflows of approximately $981.0 million in February, which marked the second consecutive month of net redemptions after 14 straight months of net inflows.
Leveraged and leveraged-inverse ETFs saw some $859.7 million in net new assets in February, with investors favoring short exposure at the expense of leveraged funds offering long exposure.

To view the complete report, please visit http://www.global.morningstar.com/febflows10.

About Morningstar, Inc.

Morningstar, Inc. is a leading provider of independent investment research in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. The company offers an extensive line of Internet, software, and print-based products and services for individuals, financial advisors, and institutions. Morningstar provides data on approximately 350,000 investment offerings, including stocks, mutual funds, and similar vehicles, along with real-time global market data on more than 4 million equities, indexes, futures, options, commodities, and precious metals, in addition to foreign exchange and Treasury markets. The company has operations in 20 countries and minority ownership positions in companies based in two other countries.

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