Stock Mutual Funds See $23.3-Billion Inflow

Investors added $23.3 billion more to U.S. stock mutual funds than they withdrew in April, the Investment Company Institute said Thursday. Investors took out a net $7.8 billion from bond funds, the Washington-based trade group for the industry said in a monthly report.

Stock fund inflows exceeded the $16 billion deposited in March and came as the Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 1.7%. Bond funds, which had inflows of $7.8 billion in March, had redemptions for the first time since January as the Lehman Bros. Aggregate U.S. Bond index slumped 2.6%.

The fund industry’s total assets were $7.48 trillion at the end of April, a 2% drop from $7.63 trillion a month earlier.

Money market funds had outflows of $46.2 billion in April, compared with $10.3 billion in March.