Nine months of outflows for Pimco Total Return

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Investors pulled $3.5 billion from Bill Gross's flagship Pimco Total Return Fund PTTRX -0.09% in January, marking the ninth consecutive month of outflows, according to Morningstar data released Tuesday. The fund lost 1.92% last year, capping a year of struggles for the fund as investors fled fixed-income investments amid rising bond yields. The Total Return Fund has a positive performance of 1.64% so far in 2014, according to Pimco's website. Nonetheless, Bill Gross maintains that there's money to be made buying bonds with short duration. In particular, he is fond of Treasurys with maturities between four and five years. 

DYI Comments:  Poor performance certainly will have a big effect on flows in or out of mutual funds. There is a secondary issue here as well and it is called performance chasing.  With stocks moving up sharply over the past 18 months Pimco Total Return mutual fund owners just had to get in on the action.  Of course this is also a symptom of a market forming a top when average Joe chases performance.

DYI