CHICAGO, Dec. 17, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Morningstar, Inc. (NASDAQ: MORN), a leading provider of independent investment research, today reported estimated U.S. mutual fund asset flows through November 2012. Outflows from U.S.-stock funds are on pace to surpass 2008's record outflow of $96.7 billion. The asset class shed another $14.1 billion in November, with particularly strong outflows from growth-oriented offerings.

However, the selling of active equity funds has not been indiscriminate—those with lower expenses have experienced slower outflows than higher-fee funds. Within the U.S.-stock broad asset class, funds with a Morningstar Analyst Rating of Gold, Silver, or Bronze have exhibited slower rates of decline than Neutral- or Negative-rated funds. Meanwhile, investors continued to shift assets to fixed-income funds, as open-end taxable-bond funds and municipal-bond funds collected $17.9 billion and $5.2 billion, respectively.

Additional highlights from Morningstar's report on mutual fund flows:

• Intermediate-term bond funds led all Morningstar categories in terms of inflows for the sixth consecutive month, garnering $8.3 billion in new assets.
• Investors redeemed $3.6 billion from high-yield bond funds in November, a category that has seen inflows of $24.4 billion year to date, while continuing to add to bank-loan funds. These offerings took in new assets of $1.8 billion in November to bring the year-to-date total to $9.2 billion.
• Although inflows to emerging-markets bond funds slowed to $882 million in November, the category has taken in $20.0 billion for the year to date in 2012, an impressive sum considering that it began the year with assets of just $46.3 billion. Diversified emerging-markets were the lone bright spot within the international-stock asset class, collecting inflows of more than $1.1 billion in November.
• PIMCO took in $6.7 billion to top all fund families in terms of November inflows, but Vanguard, with inflows of $86.2 billion, leads in the year-to-date tally behind the strength of its index fund lineup.

To view the complete report, please visit http://www.global.morningstar.com/novflows12. To view a video recapping November's U.S. asset flow trends, please visit http://bit.ly/nov12flows. For more information about Morningstar Asset Flows, please visit http://global.morningstar.com/assetflows.  

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About Morningstar, Inc.
Morningstar, Inc. is a leading provider of independent investment research in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. The company offers an extensive line of products and services for individuals, financial advisors, and institutions. Morningstar provides data on more than 385,000 investment offerings, including stocks, mutual funds, and similar vehicles, along with real-time global market data on more than 8 million equities, indexes, futures, options, commodities, and precious metals, in addition to foreign exchange and Treasury markets. Morningstar also offers investment management services through its registered investment advisor subsidiaries and has approximately $195 billion in assets under advisement and management as of Sept. 30, 2012. The company has operations in 27 countries.

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Media Contact:
Carling Spelhaug, 312-696-6150 or carling.spelhaug@morningstar.com

SOURCE Morningstar, Inc.