Investors took advantage of last week’s market decline to buy into stocks, according to Bank of America Securities. But one group wasn’t participating: hedge funds. The bank said in a note Tuesday that customer inflows into individual stocks totaled $4.1 billion, the fifth-largest since 2008. The move came after four weeks of selling. But as has been the case in recent days, retail investors have led this year’s buy-in, pushing stocks to several highs. Bank of America said both retail and institutional investors were buying last week. According to the bank, hedge funds were net sellers of U.S. stocks for the fifth consecutive week. In fact, hedge funds are being conservative as the market continues to rise. They dumped stocks at the beginning of the year and became cautious in August as the S&P 500 index was near record highs, according to Goldman Sachs data. Earlier this month, JPMorgan noted the cautious stance of macro hedge funds as indexes hit record highs. At the same time, retail investors poured about $7 billion of their balance into stocks in the first week of October, according to JPMorgan. The S&P 500 index hit an intraday high of 6,764.58 on October 9th. After a fall on Friday, a rebound on Monday and a choppy few days of trading on Tuesday, the market rose on Wednesday.
