Investors are throwing money into developing country equity funds at their quickest pace in 58 weeks, with popular emerging market exchange traded funds among the most popular picks over the past week, as depressed rates around the world push people to riskier and higher yielding assets.
Emerging market equity funds attracted $5.1 billion in inflows over the week ending August 17, the seventh straight week of inflows, the Financial Times reports.
Over the past week, the most popular ETF pick was the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (NYSEArca: EEM), which added $1.2 billion in net inflows.
Other emerging market crowd favorites also littered the top ten picks for the past week. For instance, the Vanguard FTSE Emerging Markets ETF (NYSEArca: VWO) saw $490 million in net inflows, the iShares Core MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (NYSEArca: IEMG) added $381 million and the iShares J.P. Morgan USD Emerging Markets Bond ETF (NYSEArca: EMB) attracted $339 million, according to ETF.com.
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The inflows are coming into EM funds as developing market equities rally to their highest level since July 2015, with the benchmark MSCI EM Index 15.4% higher year-to-date. Meanwhile, EEM gained 18.4%, VWO rose 18.9%, IEMG increased 17.5% and EMB advanced 14.8% so far this year.
Fueling the surge in riskier and higher yielding emerging market assets, global central bank policies and increasingly aggressive accommodative measures have pushed some $13.4 trillion in developed world global bond yields below zero.
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“As the weeks have gone by it seems like people are settling in to the fact that we are in a very accommodative market from a monetary policy perspective and rates are not going to rise too fast,” KC Nelson, a portfolio manager at Driehaus Capital Management, told the Financial Times.
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iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF