Investors shifted record amounts out of US stock funds and into bonds, while withdrawing money from emerging-market equities for a 15th straight week, according to Citigroup Inc.
US equity funds had US$24 billion of outflows in the week to Wednesday last week, according to a report today from the research unit of the third-largest US bank. Withdrawals from stock funds worldwide totaled US$28.3 billion, the report said, citing data from EPFR Global, a fund research company in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Money managers plowed US$13 billion into US bond funds, accounting for most of the US$14.8 billion that flowed into debt worldwide. All the figures for the period are record highs.
Bonds beat stocks last month for the first time since August as a slowdown in US jobs growth and turmoil in emerging markets from China to Argentina drove demand for the safest securities. The US Federal Reserve’s decision to taper its bond purchases in last month and again this month did more to temper the appeal of high-risk assets than reduce demand for US debt.
“Recent figures spooked people into thinking global growth is not as good as expected, so they sold off on equities and went into safe havens,” said Daphne Roth, the Singapore-based head of Asian equity research at ABN Amro Private Banking, which oversees about US$207 billion. Roth sold stocks late last month and is holding the money in cash, she said.
Investors pulled US$6.4 billion out of emerging-market equity funds in the period, according to the report by Markus Rosgen and Yue Hin Pong in Hong Kong. It was the biggest outflow since August 2010, the report said.
Bill Gross, who oversees the world’s biggest bond fund at Pacific Investment Management Co, said last week that the pace of economic growth in China is among the biggest questions in developing nations and the largest risks for markets.
The Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Broad Market Index returned 1.6 percent last month, including reinvested interest, while the MSCI All-Country World Index of stocks lost 4 percent.
A Bloomberg customized gauge tracking 20 developing-nation currencies fell 3.1 percent last month and has rebounded 0.8 percent this month.
Fed policy makers cut their purchases of US Treasury and mortgage debt in two steps to US$65 billion a month from US$85 billion, citing improvement in the outlook for the labor market.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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