U.S. funds raise equity allocation, cut euro zone assets: Reuters poll

Regional breakdowns showed fund managers raised their recommended allocation for North American stocks to the highest since November.

“While we are underweight bonds, we prefer the yield and quality in the U.S. markets to those overseas,” said Alan Gayle, fund manager at RidgeWorth Investments.

Regionally, funds made a massive increase to U.S. bond allocations — to 76.4 percent from 69 percent — as GDP data for the first quarter due later on Friday is expected to show a 0.8 percent contraction. (reuters://realtime/verb=Open/url=cpurl://apps.cp./Apps/econ-polls?RIC=USGDPP%3DECI)

Euro zone bond allocation was reduced to 8.9 percent from 10 percent.

Within the fixed-income portfolio, fund managers have increased their recommended allocation into high yielding paper at the expense of investment grade credit.

The highest allocation is still in government securities, which make up 41.6 percent, up slightly from 40.8 percent of the total portfolio.

Other changes include a cut to Japanese bond allocations by 4 percentage points and a minor cut in Japanese shares to 4.8 percent from 5.8 percent in the previous month.

Global poll wrapup (ASSET/WRAP)

Europe poll story (EUR/ASSET)

UK poll story (GB/ASSET)

Japan poll story (JP/ASSET)

China poll story (CN/ASSET)

(Polling By Swati Chaturvedi and Khushboo Mittal- Editing by Toby Chopra)