In times of yore, such as the 1960s and 1990s, buyers of fund units went on flings with go-go aggressive growth funds, internet funds and other flights of fancy. Those high-risk, and high-cost, escapades are all in the past.

My evidence to support these assertions . . . and emphatic it is . . . comes from the latest data on money moving into and out of mutual funds, published monthly by the Boston consulting firm Financial Research Corp.

Consider the five largest selling categories of funds in September: large value; foreign large blend; intermediate-term bond; world allocation and world stock.

Not a gimmick in the group.

The common themes are portrayed in words such as large, value and income. You can just see the money feeding steadily in, month by month, in pension and other long-term savings vehicles.

"World" is the other strong recurring note. Ten or 15 years ago, this might have been evidence of a performance-chasing fever. Today, by most analysts' accounts, it represents a realistic recognition that the economy's future is a global story.

In saying all this, do I seriously mean to suggest fund investors have grown so mature and sophisticated they will never make another mistake again? That's taking it way too far.

Instances of speculative enthusiasm have remained on display this year in, among other places, a proliferation of single-industry and commodity-themed exchange traded funds.

And I'd be the last person to say that everybody should put every dollar in a conservative type of fund. To a contrarian, the very absence of the words "aggressive growth" on current fund bestseller lists suggests there is room for a new outburst of high spirits in the market somewhere down the road.

But the picture of fund investors that emerges from their current actions is nevertheless very healthy looking. It suggests they have identified themselves as longterm investors with longterm objectives . . . and have done pretty well at choosing long-term investments suited to pursuing those goals.

It also suggests that when the stock market next runs into a bad patch, as it surely will sooner or later, fund investors are more likely to serve as stabilisers than contributors to the problem.

Measured by Financial Research's data for total assets, US fund investors have 47% of their money in domestic stock funds; 16% in international stock funds; 14% in bond funds, and 23% in money market funds.

That's a 70-30 mixture of stocks to fixed income, which makes sense at a time of relatively low interest rates and stock price-earnings ratios well below their average levels in recent years.

American fund investors are changing the mix of their stock holdings. While they presently have far more of their money in domestic than international funds, seven out of every eight new dollars they have invested this year has gone abroad.

At that rate, they will soon reach the 20% international allocation analysts have long recommended.

What direction will fund buyers take after that? It remains to be seen. But on recent evidence, it won't be anything reckless or extreme.