LONDON (Reuters) – Investors stepped up their buying of riskier assets such as stocks last week while pulling money out of safe-haven gold, BofA said on Friday, as major vaccine breakthroughs extended hopes that economies could move closer to normality in 2021.
A record $115 billion was poured into equity funds in the past four weeks, the U.S. investment bank said citing data from EPFR. Equity funds saw $9.7 billion of inflows for the week ending Dec 2.
Safe-haven gold, by contrast, has seen $9 billion in outflows in the last three weeks.
Vast government spending and central bank stimulus have also raised expectations for a return of inflation from its decade-long slumber. That helped Treasury inflation-protected securities (TIPS) attract $2 billion last week, the second-largest weekly total.
(Reporting by Thyagaraju Adinarayan; Editing by Tommy Wilkes)
