Barclays said the world has gone long equities, with the scramble for exposure picking up steam over the last month.
The bank told investors in a note that real money investors continue to quickly ratchet up their equity positions, pushing long-only institutional equity exposure to a post-COVID record.
"Long equity futures positions are hovering near 3-year highs," wrote analysts at the bank. "Global macro hedge funds completely unwound 3Q23 equity shorts and are now quite long equities, joining their multi-strategy equity HF counterparts, which maintain the long equity exposure they built up over 2023."
However, they note that systematic positioning in equities remains stretched, while China shorts have also been pared back.
Furthermore, Barclays said retail inflows to money markets is slowing, with IG credit (and to a lesser extent equities) seeing the benefits. "
Retail equity flows turned positive but are still dwarfed by inflows to credit; DM and specifically US credit remains the heavy favorite while US government bond funds saw muted overall flows," analysts explained. "Retail money market inflows remain positive but have tapered off on a rolling monthly basis."