Stock market fixings. Photo: WikiCommons.

The stock market rally in Israel has encouraged more investment in Tel Aviv’s mutual fund industry, with NIS 7 billion ($2 billion) of inflows in March, the largest net gain since January 2002, and equal to half the amount raised in all of 2013, Israel’s Globes business daily reported on Thursday.

Globes said debt and equity mutual funds raised NIS 16 billion ($4.5 billion) in the first three months of 2014.

At end-March, Israeli mutual funds had NIS 248 billion ($71 billion) in assets under management. Exchange-traded funds, which also experienced large net inflows in the period, have NIS 106 billion ($30 billion), Globes said.