Christmas mood spans over Emerging Market, as inflows to EM funds accelerated to $5.3bn, the second-strongest inflow recorded so far this year. Once again, the majority flowed into ETFs, although non-ETFs shared in the cheer, recording inflows of $1.7bn.
Non-region-specific GEM inflows almost doubled to $3.2bn, bringing YtD inflows to more than $40bn. Inflows into Asia ex-Japan remained strong, accelerating slightly to $2bn, with $1.4bn flowing into Chinese funds. Inflows into Latin American funds accelerated to $150mn, with the most of the funds flowing into regional Latin American funds.
EMEA was the only geographic region not sharing in the takings, and funds continued to report outflows. Over the week to 12 December, outflows from this region accelerated to $54mn. Outflows from Russian funds almost doubled, to $115mn. Turkey marked the strongest inflows, of $30mn, followed by Polish funds, with inflows of $20mn. South Africa inflows remained marginal, at only $1mn.
Equity-only inflows remained strong in the week to 12 December. In total, $650mn flowed into EMEA equities, with SA equities at the top of the ranking, with inflows jumping to more than $210mn. Turkey equity-only inflows were more than $130mn, followed closely by Russian equity-only inflows of marginally below $130mn. Nigeria and Kenya equity-only inflows remained positive, although inflows shrank to $0.9mn and $0.5mn, respectively.
Gold fund flows flipped back to negative territory over the past week, although outflows remained marginal, at $1.3mn. Despite the outflows, the gold price was up 1%, to $1,711.7/oz, during the same period.
Most of the indices under our observation were up over the week to 12 December. The best performers of the week were the MSCI SA (+3.2%), MSCI Poland (+2.9%) and MSCI Russia (+2.7%) indices. The only two indices falling were the MSCI Hungary (-1.5%) and MSCI Czech Republic (-1.2%).
