Global equity funds hit after Japan crises: EPFR (by Carla Mozee)
LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) -- Global equity funds in the week ended March 16 posted their biggest collective outflow since the first week of July 2010, according to data released Friday from funds-tracker EPFR, as the earthquake and tsunami and subsequent nuclear crisis that struck Japan "dealt another heavy blow to the optimistic scenarios for 2011 that held sway at the start of the year." Investors pulled $8.2 billion from equity funds, and yanked another $4.3 billion from money market funds. Japan equity funds were the only major equity-fund group to post inflows during the period, but "short positions in a few select [exchange-traded funds] may have been responsible for the inflows since non-ETFs suffered strong outflows for the week," EPFR said in the report.