Investors pulled a record amount of money from emerging-market stock funds this week as rising global borrowing costs and MSCI Inc’s decision to hold off on adding China’s yuan-denominated shares in its indexes weighed on investor sentiment, according to Barclays PLC and EPFR Global.
Funds posted US$9.2 billion of outflows in the seven days through Wednesday, US$6.8 billion of which was from those investing in China, Barclays said in a research note, citing EPFR data.
Traders have pulled US$26 billion from emerging-market funds this year, surpassing the total of US$24 billion in all of last year, the data show.
The MSCI Emerging Markets Index declined for 12 straight days through June 9, the longest losing streak since 1990, amid concern rising borrowing costs in Germany and the US will lure capital away from developing nations.
MSCI on Tuesday said that it will work with Chinese regulators to sort out some issues about market access before adding local shares to its emerging-market benchmark, disappointing some investors looking for an immediate inclusion.
“We are cautious about the asset class,” Morgan Harting, a senior portfolio manager who helps oversee about US$474 billion at AllianceBernstein Holding LP, said by telephone from New York. “The focus is on the rise of global rates. Investors are re- pricing risky assets. There are certainly reasons to be skeptical to a broader emerging-market rally, although they are cheap.”
Investors also withdrew US$500 million from emerging-market foreign-currency bond funds and US$320 million from local-currency funds during the week, according to the Barclays note.
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
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