Hungarians continue to pour their money into bond funds

HUF 9800 billion in assets under management

The growth of assets continues in the investment fund market, according to the latest statistics of the Association of Hungarian Investment Fund and Asset Management Companies (BAMOSZ), last month assets under management exceeded HUF 9800 billion, which corresponds to a 2.4% increase in assets in one month. This again represents a new high in assets under management and is approaching the HUF 10,000 billion mark.

Wealth growth in February was driven primarily by fresh inflows, with

close to HUF 230 billion of fresh money coming into investment funds last month, while there was little in the way of capital gains.

New milestone: bond funds over HUF 3,000 billion

In February, bond funds continued to increase their lead, with assets under management exceeding HUF 3000 billion.

The gap between bond funds and the real estate and mixed funds that follow them is widening. In the past month, it is also worth highlighting the absolute return funds, which have also entered the thousand billion forint range, mainly thanks to favourable exchange rate effects:

Money pours into short bonds

By far the most fresh money in a month has again flowed into bond funds, but this is almost exclusively due to short bond funds. Beyond Hungarian funds, however, there is also quite strong demand for short bond funds with eurozone exposure.

Nearly HUF 216 billion of fresh capital flowed into bond funds in February, far above the capital raised by the runner-up closed-end funds and the money market funds that followed.

There were no major capital outflows in February, with a few billion forints leaving equity and mixed funds.

Although it is too early to draw any major conclusions, it is worth looking at the graph below, which shows that bond funds have started very strongly this year, while the other categories have not yet shown impressive capital-raising capacity:

Returns in the first two months so far show that it is not bond funds that have made the most money, but absolute return funds, which have so far returned close to 3% on an asset-weighted basis. Commodity funds are also above two percent and equity funds are at close to 2%. The good news is that so far this year, all the categories under review are in positive returns:

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