Mutual fund investors pulled $26 billion out of stock funds in July, the Investment Company Institute (the fund industry trade group) says. That's a net figure: we actually put in put in $108 billion, exchanged in $17 billion. We just withdrew $26 billion more than that.

To have any net negative month is peculiar. Think of all the money that just flows automatically into stock fund in retirement accounts. In June we collectively took out $5 billion. Just back in May we were putting in net $16 billion. (April was up $16 billion and March down $10 billion).

What's strange about these numbers is that we're pulling money out when the market isn't so bad. July, when we dumped stock funds, the S&P was down about 1%. So far this year we've actually pulled out $47 billion. By this time last year we had added $97 billion to stock funds. Meanwhile we're still putting money in hybrid and corporate bond funds, just not as much as last year.

If this isn't the typical story of investors getting spooked by short-term prospects, what is it? I think we all are getting nervous about the economy in the intermediate future, like the next five years. Second, maybe we're seeing the first impact of the baby boomers retiring. If they aren't pulling the money out to live on, they may be shifting it out of stocks or funds altogether.

If you've been waiting for the market for Victorian furniture to weaken, now is your time to pounce. Antique prices are finally falling, reports the Wall Street Journal [or here if you don't have a subscription]. They point to a 19th century Chippendale-style desk that only sold for $14,000, but would've gone for $25,000 last year.

But the trend seems to be impacting things normal people might buy, too. In Pennsylvania, antique dealers are saying they're seeing prices from the 1970s and believe this is the bottom. In Texas, sellers have seen some prices fall 75% in a year. In England the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors reports that the super-rich are still buying antiques, but mere mortals have backed off.

I'm not really an antique-store shopper, but I have noticed just on eBay that prices have fallen for things I might actually want, like an old Hoosier cabinet. Antiques are the opposite of commodities. Condition, history, quirks matter. But it's still a market with macro trends. The Journal thinks people may be just sick of antiques.

I wonder if the bed bug scare has turned people off other's people furniture. Just like with real estate, there are the hold-out sellers who haven't gotten the memo and are still trying to get boom-era prices. And just because something sold for more last year, it's a mistake to think of that as what it's somehow really worth. But I'm looking at those Hoosier cabinet auctions a lot more closely.