MONEY SAVVY WEEKEND : Savvy Confidential: A Briefing for Investors : Money Fund Inflows Surged in August

Preliminary mutual fund cash inflow figures for August confirm what market strategists have been saying: Investor enthusiasm for the stock market appears to be on the wane.

Of the estimated $25 billion of net new money invested into mutual funds last month, $21.5 billion, or 86%, went into money market funds, New York fund tracker Lipper Inc. said Thursday.

Meanwhile, investors sank less than $7 billion in net new money into stock funds. And long-term bond funds saw net outflows in August, Lipper estimates.

To be sure, stock funds did better last month than they did in August 1998, when investors redeemed a net $11.6 billion at the height of the global financial crisis. However, estimates for last month’s stock fund inflows are about half of July’s flows.

Funds that invest in blue-chip growth stocks, tech stocks and Japanese stocks generally saw positive inflows during the month, Lipper officials said, while the average junk bond fund, Latin American stock fund and financial services fund saw net redemptions.

Fund flow estimates by the Santa Rosa, Calif.-based research firm Trimtabs.com project slightly higher inflows--though still modest--into stock funds.

Trimtabs believes about $9.1 billion flowed into stock funds in August, with $6.9 billion of that going to funds that invest in U.S. equities.

Official August numbers from the Investment Company Institute, the fund industry’s chief trade group, are due out Wednesday.