Euro Area Investment Funds Statistics June 2012

The ECB released the Euro area Investment Funds statistics for June 2012 which also include the Q2 data. Although they do not include the decision to drop the deposit facility rate to zero (which happened in July), the flow data are quite interesting.

In particular, investment funds increased their securities holdings by €58bn in 2012Q2 (30bn in transactions and €28bn in revaluations), a 2,2% increase mainly due to an increase in holdings of securities issued by non-euro area residents. Euro area securities holdings increased only by €4bn. Shares on the other hand dropped €72bn, mainly due to revaluations (-€60bn), a 3,8% drop. During 2012Q1, flows were +€170bn for securities (€69bn in transactions and €102bn in revaluations) and +€150bn in shares (almost exclusively due to revaluations).

Money market funds on the other hand decreased their securities holdings by €33bn (mainly because of outright transactions), a drop of 4,2%. In 2012Q1 the flow was a positive €17bn with €77bn in transactions (and a €60bn negative flow due to revaluations).

Both investment and money market funds increased their deposit and loan claims substantially (+€49bn and €39bn respectively) while money market funds had actually decreased their exposure during 2012Q1.

Funds suffer from large revaluation losses in shares and are quite reluctant to increase their euro area securities holdings, moving funds to short-term deposits and loans.