Gundlach’s Active Funds Continue To See Inflows

New York (Reuters) – While actively managed mutual funds struggle to retain assets, Jeffrey Gundlach's DoubleLine posted a net inflow of $444.4 million into its open-end mutual funds in September, marking the Los Angeles-based firm's 32^nd-consecutive month of inflows.

The $61.8 billion DoubleLine Total Return Bond Fund, the largest fund by total assets of the DoubleLine Funds, had a net inflow of $190.9 million in September, for a year-to-date net inflow of $8.3 billion.

The DoubleLine Total Return Bond Fund—managed by Gundlach, chief executive and chief investment officer of DoubleLine Capital, and Philip Barach—is an open-end intermediate-term bond fund that invests primarily in mortgage-backed securities.

TOTL ETF Attracted Nearly $95M

On the ETF side, the SPDR DoubleLine Total Return Tactical ETF (TOTL), which is similar in construct to the firm’s Total Returns Bond Fund, saw nearly $95 million in new assets in September, bringing the 19-month-old ETF’s total assets under management to just under $3 billion.

Gundlach also launched two new ETFs with State Street in April: The SPDR DoubleLine Short Duration Total Return Tactical (STOT), a short-term actively managed bond fund, with $50 million in AUM; and the SPDR DoubleLine Emerging Markets Fixed Income (EMTL), an actively managed emerging market bond fund, with nearly $40 million in assets.

Other Mutual Funds Saw Inflows As Well

The $7.6 billion DoubleLine Core Fixed Income Fund had net inflows of $87.5 million in September, bringing its year-to-date net inflow to $2 billion.

The DoubleLine Core Fixed Income Fund is an open-end intermediate-term bond fund that invests in different sectors of the fixed-income universe, including corporate securities, bank debt, collateralized loan obligations, emerging market debt, non-U.S. sovereign issues, municipal bonds and Treasurys as well as MBS.

DoubleLine's largest equities mutual fund, the $1.4 billion DoubleLine Shiller Enhanced CAPE Fund, had a net inflow of $55.3 million in September, bringing its year-to-date net inflows to $594.6 million. The DoubleLine Shiller Enhanced CAPE fund has two sources of return: an actively managed fixed-income portfolio and a rules-based exposure to the U.S. stock market.

DoubleLine's investment team actively invests in a diversified fixed-income portfolio. The fixed-income portfolio collateralizes derivatives contracts tracking the Shiller Barclays CAPE US Sector Total Return Index (the Shiller Barclays index). The fund launched on Oct. 31, 2013.