By Trevor Hunnicutt NEW YORK, Feb 28 (Reuters) - U.S. fund investors are sending a message that things are different after the market tumble, putting more cash into international stocks but showing less tolerance for bonds, Investment Company Institute (ICI) data showed on Wednesday. During the week ended Feb. 21, world stock funds pulled in $7.4 billion while their domestic counterparts posted withdrawals of $4.9 billion, according to the trade group. Bonds took in $4.5 billion. That result strengthens the trend of inflows into world stock funds, but also underscores that debt investors' patience is getting thin as inflation expectations edge up. The S&P 500 ended February down 3.9 percent, its worst monthly performance since January 2016. World stock funds have pulled in $7.9 billion a week on average during periods this year, compared with $4.5 billion during weeks in 2017, a year that passed without a single week of net withdrawals for the funds. On the other hand, the trend of investors flooding into bond funds has weakened, with the products taking in $2.1 billion a week over the last four weeks, down from a four-week average of $4.8 billion the week before and $7.4 billion a week in all of 2017, the data showed. "The investor is starting to dust themselves off, and while we're not running, we are walking this off," said Matthew Bartolini, head of SPDR Americas research at State Street Global Advisors. "People are going back to areas where there's better opportunity." U.S. mutual funds and exchange-traded funds overall netted cash for the first time since the early-February pullback during the latest week, the data showed. The stock market turbulence this month, driven partly by rising rates, had the effect of driving investors into debt funds holding longer-term Treasuries with high sensitivity to rising rates and out of high yield and other bond sectors. Bartolini said "the pendulum has swung too far" and that he expects to see non-government bond funds start pulling in money "over the next month or so." The following table shows estimated ICI flows for mutual funds and ETFs (all figures in million of dollars): 2/21 2/14 2/7 1/31 1/24/2018 Equity 2,505 1,523 -33,974 12,464 23,395 Domestic -4,899 -7,556 -37,002 4,532 12,911 World 7,405 9,079 3,028 7,931 10,483 Hybrid -965 -1,456 -1,393 -183 100 Bond 4,498 -12,114 7,303 8,855 15,110 Taxable 3,970 -11,474 7,891 7,011 12,657 Municipal 528 -640 -588 1,845 2,453 Commodity 477 182 939 386 1,412 Total 6,515 -11,864 -27,125 21,522 40,017 (Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt Editing by Susan Thomas)