INVESTORS' BINGE ON STOCK MUTUAL FUNDS EASES UP IN JUNE.

Byline: Edward Wyatt The New York Times

Investors scaled back their purchases of stock mutual funds in June, but the cascade of new money remained strong enough to confirm what all of Wall Street expected: Investors put more money into funds that invest in stocks in the first six months of 1996 than in any previous full year.

But investors continued to flee the country's largest fund, Fidelity Magellan, pulling an additional $680 million out of the fund's coffers in June, the first month under its new manager, Bob Stansky. He replaced Jeffrey N. Vinik, who resigned in May.

According to estimates Wednesday by Investment Company Institute, a mutual fund trade group, cash inflows to stock funds exceeded redemptions by a total of $15.5 billion in June, down 38 percent from May's $25.1 billion. In the first six months, such net inflows to stock funds totaled $139.5 billion, topping 1995's full-year total of $128.1 billion and the previous full-year record, set in 1993, of $129.6 billion.

Despite being the lowest monthly total this year, June's net inflows were higher than in all but one month of 1995. Analysts of the mutual fund industry said the slowdown was not surprising, given that cash flows often flag during the summer months, as investors get further from the tax season, when many people decide how to invest retirement account money or income tax refunds. In addition, greater uncertainty recently about the stock market's direction may have affected fund flows.

Bond funds took in no net new cash in June, after adding $320 million in May. If that estimate holds up when final figures are issued at the end of the month, June will mark the fifth straight month of declining inflows to bond funds.

Investors have largely ignored bonds in their lust for stock funds, particularly those that invest most aggressively. But after taking in a record monthly total of $9.2 billion in May, aggressive growth stock funds gathered significantly less money in June and early July, according to two independent trackers of mutual fund cash flows.

AMG Data Services of Arcata, Calif., which estimates weekly fund cash flows, reported that a four-week moving average of inflows into aggressive growth and emerging growth stock funds had fallen by 50 percent to 80 percent over the last month.

Mutual Fund Trim Tabs, a newsletter based in Santa Rosa, Calif., which estimates cash flows twice a week, reported that in the most recent period, aggressive growth funds not only experienced a reversal, with more money flowing out than in, but that this was the largest outflow in the company's records, which date back to April 1994.

The waning of investors' appetite for aggressive growth funds came as small-company stocks were suffering sharp declines in late June and early July, when the shares of numerous companies, particularly in the technology industry, fell sharply on announcements that second-quarter earnings would fall below estimates.

``The flow has gotten quite conservative,'' said Charles Biderman, editor of the Trim Tabs newsletter. He noted that growth and income funds, a more conservative group of equity funds, continued to record inflows in the most recent period, as growth and aggressive growth funds saw outflows.

Investment Company Institute, which bases its estimates on a broader survey of funds, accounting for 97 percent of long-term mutual fund assets, reported that the slowdown in stock fund flows was spread across all major types of domestic funds.

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The New York Times