Funds / Flows and redemption pressure
What investors took out of funds, month by month
Registered investment companies other than money market funds and small business investment companies file Form N-PORT, and the public filing reports share sales, reinvested distributions and redemptions for each of the three months of the fund's fiscal quarter. This page maps those months onto true calendar months and aggregates them. Closed-end funds are left out, because they carry no SEC series identifier to key a panel on and do not redeem shares in any case. What remains is 921,913 fund-months drawn from 317,753 filings by 17,474 funds, over 78 complete months from September 2019 to February 2026.
Data as of February 2026 (SEC Form N-PORT data sets)
The monthly record, 2019–2026
Subscriptions and redemptions, each as a percentage of the net assets of the funds reporting them. Across the complete months other than the one below, redemptions run at a median of 2.30% of net assets a month, and the calmest month in the sample is 1.81%. The aggregate takes in more than it pays out in 67 of the 78 complete months, for $8.50T of cumulative net creation. One month sits apart from all of them. In March 2020 funds redeemed 7.25% of net assets, 3.2 times the median month and the highest reading here, and net flow was −$355.3B: the largest outflow in the sample, 1.8 times the second largest (July 2025, −$192.7B).
Source: SEC, Form N-PORT Data Sets | NBER recession chronology via FRED USREC Each month's rate divides the summed flow by the summed net assets of the funds covering that month, so it is value-weighted. Both series are as filed, normalised only for the sign convention described in the methodology. Methodology
The heaviest months
| Month | Funds | Net assets | Redeemed | Net flow | Funds in outflow |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| March 2020 | 11,611 | $21.41T | 7.25% | −$355.3B | 63.1% |
| April 2020 | 11,533 | $23.18T | 3.89% | $47.5B | 52.2% |
| February 2022 | 11,752 | $30.17T | 3.54% | $330.2B | 51.2% |
| December 2022 | 11,920 | $27.10T | 3.07% | $310.3B | 41.1% |
| June 2022 | 11,805 | $27.07T | 2.99% | $13.2B | 56.5% |
Source: SEC, Form N-PORT Data Sets The five complete months with the highest value-weighted redemption rate, out of 78. "Funds in outflow" is the share of funds whose sales plus reinvested distributions fell short of their redemptions that month. Methodology
Which funds the money ran from
Form N-PORT Item B.3 asks for portfolio risk metrics only when the average value of the fund's debt positions over the previous three months exceeds a quarter of its net asset value, and Item B.3.c then splits credit spread sensitivity into investment grade and non-investment grade, with zeros required where there is no exposure. That separates the filings into three groups without any outside classification: funds reporting no credit spread sensitivity at all, funds reporting it for investment grade only, and funds reporting non-investment grade exposure. In March 2020 the two credit-reporting groups held 31.8% of net assets across 3,175 of 11,611 funds, and accounted for 88.7% of the month's net outflow.
Source: SEC, Form N-PORT Data Sets | SEC, Form N-PORT (OMB 3235-0730) Group membership is recomputed on every filing, so a fund that crosses the Item B.3 debt threshold moves between groups from that quarter on. The label describes what the fund reported, not what it is called. Methodology
| Reported credit spread risk | Funds | Net assets | Redeemed, Mar 2020 | Median month | Net flow, Mar 2020 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No credit spread risk reported | 8,436 | $14.60T | 4.90% | 2.04% | −$40.1B |
| Investment grade only | 477 | $580.9B | 15.17% | 6.38% | −$21.3B |
| Non-investment grade reported | 2,698 | $6.23T | 12.01% | 2.42% | −$293.9B |
| All funds | 11,611 | $21.41T | 7.25% | 2.30% | −$355.3B |
Source: SEC, Form N-PORT Data Sets "Median month" is the median value-weighted redemption rate of that group over the 77 complete months other than March 2020, so the comparison never contains the episode it is compared against. Methodology
How far the pressure reached across funds
An aggregate rate can hide a handful of large funds doing the redeeming, so the same months are shown here as a distribution across funds, each fund's own redemptions over its own net assets. In the median month the median fund redeems 1.45% of its net assets, the 90th percentile fund 6.39% and the 95th 13.73%. In March 2020 those three read 4.03%, 18.55% and 33.42%, and 63.1% of funds paid out more than they took in against 51.2% in the median month. The episode moved the whole distribution, not only its tail.
Source: SEC, Form N-PORT Data Sets | NBER recession chronology via FRED USREC Equal-weighted, so each fund counts once whatever its size. A fund can redeem more than its period-end net assets in a month, so the upper quantiles are not bounded at 100%. Methodology
The balance sheet behind the flows
Open-end funds carry very little explicit leverage, and the filings say so. Across the 26 complete calendar quarters, total liabilities peak at 5.72% of net assets in 2020 Q1 and money actually borrowed from banks and other financial institutions peaks at 0.586% in 2020 Q1, both in the quarter that contains the episode. Borrowing is also rare: between 231 and 318 funds a quarter report any, and 315 do in 2026 Q1 out of 12,886.
Source: SEC, Form N-PORT Data Sets One balance sheet per filing, stamped with the calendar quarter its report date falls in. A fiscal quarter ends inside exactly one calendar quarter, so a fund normally contributes one balance sheet per calendar quarter; 267 of the 307,995 fund-quarters here carry two, from funds that moved their fiscal year-end, and both are counted. Methodology
Did the borrowers redeem harder?
The flow and the balance sheet come from the same filing, so the two can be crossed directly. Pooled over the complete months before March 2020 the funds that reported borrowings are almost indistinguishable from the rest, 2.44% against 2.39%. In March 2020 they redeemed 12.91% against 7.07%, and their net flow was −7.30% of net assets against −1.47%. They are a small group, 306 funds holding $685.2B, so this is a statement about them and not about the aggregate, which they cannot move.
| Item B.2.c borrowings | Funds | Net assets | Redeemed, Mar 2020 | Redeemed, before | Net flow, Mar 2020 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reported | 306 | $685.2B | 12.91% | 2.44% | −$50.0B |
| None reported | 11,305 | $20.72T | 7.07% | 2.39% | −$305.3B |
Source: SEC, Form N-PORT Data Sets "Before" pools every complete month earlier than March 2020, with each fund-month classified by the borrowings reported on the filing that carries it. Methodology
Methodology
The three months are not January, February and March
The raw filing labels its flow fields MON1, MON2 and MON3. Those are the first, second and third months of the FUND'S FISCAL QUARTER, and funds keep different fiscal calendars. Form N-PORT requires a report for each month of a fiscal quarter, filed within 60 days of that quarter's end, and makes public the report for the third month; Item B.6 then asks for flows during each of the preceding three months. So MON3 is the calendar month of the report date, MON2 the month before it and MON1 the month before that. Reading MON1 as January would misdate March 2020 by two months for every fund whose fiscal quarter ends in May.
That mapping is checked rather than assumed. March 2020 reaches this panel through three groups of funds that share no members: those whose fiscal quarter ended that month, for whom it is the third month, and those whose quarters ended one and two months later, for whom it is the second and the first. If the offset were wrong for any of them, that group would be reporting an ordinary month while the others reported a run. They agree to 0.20 percentage points.
| Position in the fiscal quarter | Fiscal quarter ends | Funds | Net assets | Redeemed, Mar 2020 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First month | May 2020 | 2,193 | $4.40T | 7.36% |
| Second month | April 2020 | 3,270 | $5.78T | 7.35% |
| Third month | March 2020 | 6,148 | $11.23T | 7.16% |
Source: SEC, Form N-PORT Data Sets | SEC, Form N-PORT (OMB 3235-0730) The three rows are disjoint sets of funds on disjoint fiscal calendars, so nothing in one row is arithmetically forced to match another. The build script refuses to write its output if they disagree by more than one percentage point. Methodology
The denominator
A rate needs net assets, and the filing reports them once, as of its own period end. For the third month of the fiscal quarter that is the true month end; for the first and second it is one or two months later, and nothing in the filing lets the earlier figures be reconstructed, because distributions paid in cash and expenses are not reported. Every rate here therefore divides a month's flow by the net assets of the filing it came from. 33.4% of the panel's rows carry a true month-end denominator. Recomputing March 2020 on those rows alone, which is a different and much smaller set of funds (6,148 funds), gives 7.16% against 7.25% for the whole month, so the choice of denominator is not what produces the episode.
The sign convention
Item B.6 asks for the total net asset value of shares sold, reinvested and redeemed, three magnitudes; the form reserves negative numbers for the gain and loss items. A minority of filers nonetheless report redemptions as a negative cash flow, and summing the two conventions together would net them against each other. The build takes the magnitude of all three components and keeps the original sign as a column so the normalisation can be audited. The two camps sit at different levels but move together. Pooled over the complete months before March 2020, the camp that files positive redeemed 2.13% of net assets and in March 2020 itself 6.13%, a multiple of 2.9; the camp that files negative went from 3.81% to 13.32%, a multiple of 3.5. The negative-filing camp is 19.4% of the panel's rows.
Coverage, and what is left out
Because each filing covers three months and a fund files once per fiscal quarter, a fund contributes at most one observation to any calendar month, and the build refuses to write the panel if one contributes two. The fund count per month is therefore a clean coverage signal, and the edges of the sample fail it: the earliest months are reachable only through funds whose fiscal quarter ended then, and the most recent are still being filed. 5 months are dropped for that reason (Jul 2019, 5,606 funds; Aug 2019, 8,545 funds; Mar 2026, 10,337 funds; Apr 2026, 3,996 funds; May 2026, 3 funds), against 12,890 in February 2026. Counting fiscal-calendar cohorts alone would not have caught them all: 1 of the 5 dropped months carries all three cohorts and is trimmed on the fund count instead.
Two other exclusions are worth stating. Filings that carry no usable SEC series identifier are dropped, because the panel has no stable key for them. Closed-end funds make up much of that group by construction: they are not organised as a series of a trust, so they have no series identifier, and they do not redeem shares at all. Fund-months missing any one of the three Item B.6 components are dropped as well, so that every row is complete and every aggregate covers the same rows. Where a fund changed its fiscal year-end and two filings overlap on a calendar month, the observation whose period end is nearer that month is kept. The build script prints the count for each of these, the net-asset share the series-identifier exclusion carries, and how many of the excluded filings report zero redemptions in all three months.
Definitions
Net flow is Item B.6.a plus Item B.6.b minus Item B.6.c: shares sold, plus shares issued for reinvested dividends and distributions, minus shares redeemed or repurchased. Reinvested distributions are counted as subscriptions because that is what they are, a distribution buying new shares, and they are reported separately so a reader can net them out. The redemption rate is Item B.6.c over Item B.1.c. Total liabilities are Item B.1.b and borrowings are Item B.2.c, amounts payable to banks and other financial institutions, within and after one year, both taken over Item B.1.c. All amounts are in US dollars, as Item B.1 requires. Nothing on this page is smoothed, screened by fund size, or adjusted for a fund entering or leaving the sample.
Sources
- U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Form N-PORT Data Sets. One archive per calendar quarter, extracted from the filings as submitted. A US federal government work, public domain. This module reads two tables out of each archive, the submission header and the fund summary, and leaves the position-level tables closed.
- U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Form N-PORT. The form itself, for the filing frequency, the public-availability rule that makes the third month of each fiscal quarter the published report, the Item B.3 debt threshold behind the credit spread groups, and the Item B.6 wording that fixes the sign convention.
- NBER business-cycle chronology via the FRED USREC series. The recession shading, derived from the series rather than typed in.
Money market funds are excluded from Form N-PORT and file Form N-MFP instead; they sit on the money funds page. The market-wide stress backdrop for March 2020 is on conditions.