“Clients Still Don’t Believe The Rally” – Smart Money Sells Stocks For Record 18th Consecutive Week
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
6/1/2016
Last week, when BofA reported that its “smart money” clients had sold stocks fora record 17th week, the bank offered the following silver lining.
Sales have now been slowing for the last four weeks, with last week’s net sales of $218mn notably the smallest since late February. Institutional and private clients continued to sell US stocks for the 13th and 15th consecutive weeks, respectively, though net sales by institutional clients were the smallest since mid-February. Hedge fund clients were net buyers, after selling stocks the previous four weeks. Net sales were entirely in mid-caps last week, as small caps saw net buying for the second week, and large caps saw net buying for the first time since January.
We cautioned that this may be overly optmistic for two reasons: selling by hedge funds, institutional and private clients had slowed down in the past only to spike up again shortly thereafter, and that the ongoing liquidations are less likely an indication of overall market sentiment, as much as pent up redemption requests and forced selling as investors demand their cash at a time when the market has failed to achieve new highs for over a year.
We were right, and as BofA’s Jill Carey Hall writes overnight, “last week, BofAML clients were net sellers of US stocks for the 18th consecutive week, continuing the longest uninterrupted selling streak in our data history (since ’08).”
The Rest…HERE
