UPDATE 1-US muni bond funds report $317 mln inflows-Lipper

July 5 (Reuters) - Net inflows into U.S. municipal bond funds f ell to $317 million in the week ended July 4, dropping to almost half of the $625 million of inflows in the previous week, a ccording to data released by Lipper on Thursday.

Despite the drop, flows into the funds popular with retail investors have been positive with the exception of only one week so far in 2012.

"I think the holiday played into that," said Matthew Lemieux, a research analyst at Lipper, adding that investors tend to not make big moves toward the end of the quarter. On July 4th, the market was closed for the Independence Day holiday.

The four-week moving average remained positive at $465.6 million, said Lipper, a unit of Thomson Reuters.

Flows into high-yield muni funds fell to nearly $143 million in the latest week from $204 million in the w e ek ended June 27 . M eanwhile, exc hange-traded muni funds r eported a net outflow of $264,000, marking their first outflow since mid-April. In the previous week, the funds reported $37. 5 million of net inflows.

BondDesk Group data for the week ended July 3 showed retail investors bought 3 .0 bonds for each one they sold, u p from 2.5 in t he previous week.

The total number of bonds bought was 54,189 , while the number of bonds sold was 1 8,107. The data is based on odd-lot customer transactions.