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What to Buy- Foreign vs Domestic funds?

Calm before the storm. At least that's what I've been reading. It seems that there is still not much buying. Much of the buying seems to be just shifting funds from one account to the next. It's called "churning" in broker turns. So, I wanted to see if anyone was buying, you know, new money. I clicked on over the Investment Company Institute website to see if they could shed some light on this matter. Based on their recent reports, "Estimated inflows to long-term mutual funds were $12.48 billion for the week ended Wednesday, June 10, 2009 ", versus $13.646 billion for the week of June 3. At least it wasn't negative. There is buying. As a matter of fact, buying has almost doubled compared to inflow numbers reported in May.

I also noticed that Equity Foreign Funds had a larger percentage increase than other categories while Taxable Bond Funds had a noticeable percentage decrease in inflows as compared to the previous periods. Interesting. Are investors saying that current foreign returns versus the risk is better than investing in corporate bonds? Put it another way, is the probability of expected risk adjusted returns in foreign or emerging markets the same, less or better than investing in taxable corporate bonds in the US? The answer in the next post with a possible list of what you should be buying.

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