Despite the seemingly free fall in equity markets, investors appear to be sticking by their stocks, a Reuters survey has found. A poll of 43 investment firms in the U.S., Europe and Japan found that cash levels in portfolios rose to an average of 4.6%, up from 3.8%, but investors barely abandoned stocks, declining from 62.4% of their portfolios to 61.4%. “We are seeing this as a correction rather than as a beginning of a collapse,” Michala Marcussen of Société Générale, where she is director of strategy and economic research. U.S. fund managers recorded a greater shift in cash from an average 2.2% of a portfolio in April to 4.7%, a move that market observers say reflects a strategy of staying out of the market in certain volatile periods.
