Research from Morningstar's annual Global Fund Flows found that actively managed fixed income funds saw $422 billion in outflows during the first half of the year. That figure accounted for 74% of all outflows from active portfolios. Active funds as a whole saw $568 billion in outflows, while index funds generated $432 billion in inflows. The net difference of $136 billion in outflows was the most since June to December of 2008, during the height of the Financial Crisis. The high percentage of active fixed income outflows is partly a result of the automatic rebalancing of model portfolios and target-date funds. Since equity returns have been more negative, automatic rebalancing has been triggering more trades to equity strategies to get allocations back in line. Passive fixed income funds saw $90 billion in inflows.

Finsum: Active fixed income funds accounted for 74% of all outflows from active portfolios during the first half of the year as automatic rebalancing favored equity strategies.