FILE PHOTO: Street signs for Broad St. and Wall St. are seen outside of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., March 7, 2019. REUTERS\/Brendan McDermid\/File Photo<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/div>\n NEW YORK (Reuters) – Investors pulled approximately $3.4 billion out of mutual funds and exchange traded funds that hold U.S. equities last week, extending the largest sustained pullback from the domestic stock market in more than a year, according to data released Wednesday by the Investment Company Institute. <\/p>\n The outflows marked the seventh out of the last eight weeks that investors have pulled money out of U.S. stocks, pushing year-to-date losses for the category to nearly $129.7 billion. <\/p>\n Those declines have come despite the benchmark S&P 500 hitting a series of record highs due to optimism over a deal that could end the trade war between the U.S. and China. But concerns over the relatively high valuation of U.S. stocks during a rally in which the S&P 500 is up nearly 24% since the start of January have weighed on long-term investor sentiment. <\/p>\n Investors instead appeared to be seeking out more attractive valuations in world stock funds, which took in about $4.9 billion in new assets. The inflows were the largest weekly gain since March 2018, and marked the second straight week of inflows. <\/p>\n Fixed-income funds, meanwhile, added nearly $12.7 billion in new assets as investors sought out the perceived safety of bonds. The weekly inflow was the largest since early September and brought the year-to-date gain for the category to slightly more than $378 billion. <\/p>\n