LatAm Equity Funds Keep Sliding

LatAm equity funds lost $91.0 million in the first week of December, while EM equity funds sustained outflows of $553.4m in the same period, or 0.3% of total assets, bringing year to date outflows to $41.7bn, says EPFR Global. “So far in 2008 investors have taken back nearly half of all net contributions to emerging market equity funds that were contributed in the previous five years,” says the fund tracker. By returns, LatAm equity funds registered a severe 13.73% drop for the week ended December 4 and a year-to-date drop of 63.36%, making it the worst performer of all world equity funds, according to Lipper. EM equity funds are the second-worse performers for the week and year-to-date, dropping 5.45% and 60.86% respectively. Global small and mid-cap equity funds, meanwhile, dropped 4.57% during the week and 50.29% year-to-date. The average slide for all world equity funds for the week is 4.64% and 51.89% year-to-date.