As budget battles in Washington and austerity debates in Rome flare up, advisers are under increasing pressure to keep nervous investors from bailing out of stock funds.

While nearly $47bn of net new money has flowed into stock mutual funds so far this year, increased anxiety is starting to show among investors using exchange-traded funds, says Lipper analyst Tom Roseen. He observes that investment flows into ETFs, which are used by many institutional traders, have turned flat to negative in the past several weeks.