Morningstar, Inc., a leading provider of independent investment research, today reported estimated U.S. mutual fund asset flows through May 2012. Long-term mutual funds recorded their smallest monthly intake year to date, with $14.1 billion in new assets. Among the broad asset classes, taxable-bond funds showed the greatest decline from April inflows of $16.9 billion to $7.7 billion in May, and U.S-stock funds saw their 13th consecutive month of outflows.

Additional highlights from Morningstar's report on mutual fund flows:

• Although actively managed stock funds—both U.S. and international—have suffered outflows of more than $172.3 billion over the past 12 months, a subset of these, dividend-focused equity-income funds, have bucked the trend and seen inflows of $21.7 billion over the same period.
• After five straight months of strong inflows, high-yield bond funds saw net outflows of $1.2 billion in May as prices fell, but the magnitude of money leaving open-end funds was relatively small compared with past pullbacks.
• Vanguard, led by inflows to its index funds, and JPMorgan had the greatest provider-level inflows during the month. However, MFS was a close third, fueled by inflows of $1.3 billion for MFS Value. American Funds notched its 35th consecutive month of outflows.
• Although money market funds reversed four straight months of outflows, inflows were a negligible $1.4 billion in May.