Investors load up on cash, gold in flight from stocks - BofA

Investors flocked to cash, gold and investment-grade bonds, BofA's fund flow statistics showed on Friday, as the United States awaited approval from Congress for further stimulus.

Trepidation over the fate of the package saw $7.4 billion leave equity funds in the week to Wednesday, while fund flows into European equities over the past month also faltered, with $1 billion flowing out, the BofA data showed.

U.S. equity funds witnessed the biggest outflows in six weeks, shedding $6.5 billion.

Despite the outflows, the S&P 500 is close to a record high as stimulus measures already taken helped U.S. stocks indexes overcome a sell-off in the aftermath of the coronavirus outbreak.

BofA's sentiment gauge, the Bull & Bear indicator, was stuck at 3.4, implying "fear" over, "greed" yet to begin.

Gold, which broke through $2,000 to reach record highs this week, attracted $2.7 billion.

Meanwhile investment-grade bond funds pulled in $14.7 billion as investors followed central banks, whose asset purchases are running at $2 billion per hour, BofA said.

(Reporting by Thyagaraju Adinarayan; Editing by Sujata Rao and Alexander Smith)