Global Investing

Just as Germany helps to embolden hopes for a robust recovery in Europe, a look at detailed fund flows data offers more cheer to the optimists.

I’ve been seeing which equity fund sectors saw the greatest net inflows during July, and then filtering the top 20 by flows relative to the sector’s total assets. There’s a clear winner.

According to estimates from Lipper, funds and ETFs in the cyclical consumer goods and services category notched up net inflows of about $1.5 billion, the equivalent of 7.8% of overall assets under management and the largest monthly net inflow for at least ten years. Over the 3 months to end-July, net inflows were at close to $3.4 billion.

In theory, these 300+ funds are global in scope, but it’s probably fair to say this looks mostly like a bet on the U.S. consumer; 11 of the top 20 funds by assets in the category are domiciled there. Recent data has given encouragement to investors, although there are doubts about just how robust sentiment is.

It might be a blunt tool, but if we make an assumption that bets on individual industry sectors can represent a play on resilient growth, then there is further evidence to be considered. In total, seven industry sector fund categories make into that top 20 group by net inflows in July. Banks and financials saw inflows equivalent to 4.64% of latest assets under management; pharma and healthcare 2.20%; IT 1.90%; gold and precious metals 1.67%; utilities 1.27% and natural resources 0.65%.

Morocco fears its stock market is on the verge of being re-classified as a frontier market when  index provider MSCI announces its annual rejig of equity indices this month.

Maybe it should pray for relegation instead. A report at the end of last week by Citi notes the boom in frontier market equities — they have risen 15 percent since the start of this year, a stark contrast to their better known, more liquid emerging market cousins which have fallen around 5 percent so far this year. In fact the performance of the frontiers — comprising less liquid, smaller markets from Kenya to Kazakhstan — has been more akin to the U.S. or Japanese equity markets which have earned investors double-digit returns this year.

Citi notes that the seven best returning markets in the world this year are all in the so-called frontiers, while the nine worst laggards are from the emerging world. Check out the graphic below. It shows how markets such as Kenya, Bulgaria and the United Arab Emirates have rallied more than 40 percent this year.

Is there a change of sector leadership underway within emerging markets?

For years, commodities and energy delivered world-beating returns to emerging market investors. Yet in recent years there are signs of a shift, says Todd Henry, equity portfolio specialist at T.Rowe Price.

With the China tailwind no longer as strong as before demand for oil and metals will not be as robust as in the past decade, Henry says. But in China as well as elsewhere, disposable incomes have risen as a result of the fast economic growth these countries experienced in the past decade.

Check out the following two graphics from T.Rowe Price.

The first figure shows that in the ten years to December 2007, just before the global financial crisis erupted, emerging equities returned 300 percent in dollar terms. The two sectors that won the returns race in this period were energy and commodities, with dollar-based returns of around 650 percent. This is not surprising, given the enormous surge in Chinese demand for all manner of commodities, from oil to steel, as it fired up its exporters’ factories and embarked on a frenzy of infrastructure improvements.

On Friday 283 companies in the S&P 500 had a dividend yield higher than the 10-year Treasury yield, at yesterday’s close this had fallen to 266 but remains very high compared to the last 5-years.

Italian consumer morale plunged to its lowest level on record in May as Italians’ pessimism over the state of the economy plumbed new depths.

Germany set a zero coupon on its new Schatz, the first time it has done so on debt of such maturity. The bid to cover ratio for the new bond at the auction was 1.7, compared with 1.8 at a sale of two-year debt on April 18.

The year has certainly got off to a good start for luxury companies, with firms like LVMH, home to Louis Vuitton, reporting stellar results for the first quarter. No wonder – according to CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets analyst Aaron Fischer, resurgent emerging market consumers are fuelling a strong growth in the global luxury goods market. Growth in the sector was  double its long-term average last year, Fischer says.  He has updated his bullish 2011 report “Dipped in Gold” and is particularly optimistic on established brands, predicting global growth of 10% in 2012, slowing slightly from last year’s 14% rise:

However, we expect leading brands to continue to outperform, rising 15%, compared with the street’s estimate of 12%, which seems far too low.

We look for emerging market consumers, especially when travelling, to drive robust sector growth in the medium term, posting a 15% demand compound annual growth rate in the next 10 years.

Equities in the countries most exposed to the euro zone crisis seem to be being hit especially hard this year. The Datastream index of shares in Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain has a total return of -5.3% this year compared to +8.9% for a euro zone index excluding those countries.

U.S. consumers went back to using their credit cards in March to keep spending while student and new-car loans shot up as the value of outstanding consumer credit jumped at the fastest rate since late 2001, data from the Federal Reserve showed on Monday.

Total consumer credit grew by $21.36 billion – more than twice the $9.8 billion rise that Wall Street economists surveyed by Reuters had forecast.

U.S. consumer confidence came in slightly weaker than expected but the ‘jobs-hard-to-get’ index – historically a good lead indicator of the unemployment rate - fell to 37.5 in April.

Spanish equities in price terms are near their 2009 lows but valuations are still some way above:

Australian consumer prices rose by less than expected last quarter while key measures of underlying inflation showed the smallest rise in more than a decade, paving the way for a cut next week and suggesting further cuts were possible.

Spanish 10-year bond yields hit 6%, around the levels seen in Ireland/Portugal and Italy/Spain at the start and resumption of ECB bond purchases.

U.S. retail sales rose more than expected in March as Americans shrugged off high gasoline prices.

Currency speculators boosted their bets against the euro in the latest week. Figures from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission released on Friday showed a jump in euro net shorts of 101,364 contracts this week from 79,480 previously.

The correlation between individual country equity indices is rising again:

U.S. consumer spending jumps in February but income growth tepid.

Apple vs. RIM market value: