Despite the weakness of the global economy, more than 90 percent of about 1,100 mutual funds either targeting the local bourse or its overseas counterparts have been profitable so far this year, JPMorgan Asset Management said on Saturday.
The statistics released by the fund management firm showed the average return of the stock mutual funds hit 11.05 percent, while the return of the 10 most profitable funds among the 1,100 funds even topped 37 percent. The 10 top earners have largely invested in the fast-growing ASEAN and real estate in the Asian markets, JPMorgan Asset Management said.
Pauline Ng (黃寶麗), a fund manager with the JF ASEAN Fund, said although a sluggish global economy has hurt global exports, bilateral trade growth among the 10 ASEAN member countries remained solid and investments in the region still grew. As a result, Ng said, stock markets in the ASEAN region have been defensive during the global economic downturn and served as a safe haven for investors. The stock markets in the region have posted gains for four years in a row, she added.
According to Ng, this year the bourses in the Philippines and Thailand, two of the 10 ASEAN members, have risen about 30 percent, while net foreign institutional buying in the two markets have hit a new high since 2008. Furthermore, she said, the MSCI Southeast Asia Index has added more than 20 percent so far this year.
Investments in the ASEAN region have begun to pick up since 2010 with investors eyeing the property and industrial sectors, and fixed private investments have accounted for more than 20 percent of the region’s GDP, Ng said. The 10 member countries in the bloc have made intensive efforts to knock down most trade barriers to facilitate export growth in the region and last year bilateral trade made up 25 percent of the region’s GDP.
With China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand to join the ASEAN Free Trade Area, the bloc’s GDP is expected account for almost one-third of the world’s, Ng said.
Jeffery Roskell, a fund manger with the JF Asia Pacific Income Fund, said as the US property market has showed signs of a recovery amid rising liquidity, many real-estate investment trust funds have recorded solid gains so far this year.
Roskell said since major central banks, including the US Federal Reserve, have kept injecting funds into the market, the Asia-Pacific region has benefited from a spill-over effect with massive funds having entered the region.
The fund manager said ample liquidity has prompted many investors to park their money in real estate located in the area.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained