LONDON (Reuters) - Bank of America Merrill Lynch said on Friday its market sentiment indicator had risen to a six-week high as investors turned less bearish, encouraged by better equity market conditions and inflows to emerging market debt.
Some riskier assets attracted flows in the week to Wednesday with commodity funds adding $300 million in the fourth week of inflows, while high-yield debt funds sucked in $1.9 billion and emerging debt funds saw $300 million of inflows, the bank said, citing EPFR data.
Meanwhile investment-grade bond funds attracted $7.1 billion in the 39th week of inflows, BAML added.
The outperformance of credit compared to U.S. treasuries also helped the bank's “Bull & Bear” gauge of market sentiment tick up to 1.9 in the week to Wednesday, from 1.3 week before. The indicator runs from zero, indicating extremely bearish and "buy", to 10, signaling extremely bullish and "sell".
(Reporting by Tom Arnold, editing by Karin Strohecker)
