The Daily Digit: $44 billion. This is how much money flew into equity funds year-to-date according to data from Lipper. Matthew Lemieux oversaw the research. SOUNDBITE: MATTHEW LEMIEUX, SENIOR RESEARCH ANALYST, LIPPER (ENGLISH) SAYING: "Most of it, or I'd say a lot of it, is going towards international. The amount that is going towards U.S. diversified stocks is what is really catching people's eye." That means 20 billion dollars of the 44 billion. But it's hard to say definitely whether retail investors are back. SOUNDBITE: MATTHEW LEMIEUX, SENIOR RESEARCH ANALYST, LIPPER (ENGLISH) SAYING: "In the short-term it seems like they have been. But, again, we want to see this over the long-term." With $37.4 billion of inflows, January was the strongest first month of the year since 2000. SOUNDBITE: MATTHEW LEMIEUX, SENIOR RESEARCH ANALYST, LIPPER (ENGLISH) SAYING: "Investors seem to be feeling a little bit more confident, just not about the markets, but I think it's partially about the economies." Investors continue to allocate new money to the funds business. For the week ending February 13th, mutual funds and exchange-traded funds, excluding money market funds, reported net inflows of $4.4 billion.