Quarterly Monitor; A Periodic Look at Performance And Where Investor Money is Moving
Giving Back Gains</br></br>In the latest quarter, U.S.-stock funds gave back part, but not all, of the gains they rang up in the first three months of 2012.</br></br>The average diversified U.S.-stock fund posted a negative 4.6% return for the three months through June, as investors fretted about the strength of the U.S. recovery and about the debt crisis in Europe. That left the funds up an average of 7% so far this year, after a 12.3% advance in the first quarter, according to Thomson Reuters Corp.'s Lipper unit.</br></br>Dividend-focused equity-income funds had some of the smallest losses, returning an average of negative 2.2%. Many investors have turned to income-oriented stock funds as a relatively conservative stock-market play and, in some cases, as an alternative to bond funds in an era of ultralow interest rates.</br></br>Diversified international-stock funds fell harder than U.S.-focused funds, returning a negative 7.1% in the second quarter, according to Lipper. That leaves them with an average gain of 3.8% for the first six months of 2012. Emerging-markets funds fell 8.5%, leaving them up 4.3% for the year to date.