EWM News and Press, iShares MSCI Malaysia Index Fund From 09/06/21

Many Southeast Asian economies have continued to be hammered by escalating new COVID-19 Delta waves during August. The economic recovery that was underway in Southeast Asia during the latter part of 2020 and early 2021 has been increasingly impacted by widespread lockdowns that have d...

Global manufacturing remained beset by unprecedented supply issues in July, which constrained output and drove prices higher. The analysis of survey responses suggests that the number of companies reporting lower production due to staff or materials shortages is running at around five...

Global real GDP reached a new high in the second quarter of 2021, completing a year-long recovery from the COVID-19 recession. The resilience of the global economy amid a lingering pandemic suggests that the world is learning to live with the COVID-19 virus. Western Europe's consu...

The Indian stock market is soaring despite a very weak economy and employment picture. FX depreciation of the INR against the USD and foreign portfolio outflows are a barrier to further gains and could catalyze a drawdown. Indian equity market valuations are at a sky-high level ex...

A marked fall in business optimism in July hints that companies could become reticent to expand capacity while the pandemic continues to hit supply chains. Output growth continued to run behind the growth of new orders for a fifth straight month, meaning backlogs of work rose sharply ...

The Delta variant of the coronavirus is rattling markets and poses real risks, but we should not be distracted from the successful impact of vaccinations. The effectiveness of vaccinations is the reason U.S. real GDP is back to pre-crisis levels amid this still-raging pandemic. Gl...

UST longs and/or USD shorts should not take solace in the GDP "miss". Nominal GDP registered a major 13% increase, while real GDP grew "only" 6.5%. Personal consumption expenditures rose 11.8%. The PCE deflator which adjusts nominal to real growth came in at 6.4%. Higher-than-expe...

Malaysia equities appear to be fairly priced, but with no margin of safety. EWM is exposed mainly to bank stocks, and these stocks are not likely to outperform given how low interest rates are. Further easing in the region could support the APAC economies, but while Malaysia might...

The Asia-Pacific region experienced a recession in 2020 owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, with Asia-Pacific GDP contracting by an estimated 1.1%. During the second half of 2020, many Asia-Pacific economies had shown a significant recovery in economic momentum. However, recovery mome...

Once a quarter, I conduct a review of market valuations around the globe. Turkey is currently the cheapest market in the world by many measures. Turkey is cheap for many social, geopolitical, and economic reasons, including inflation, currency depreciation, and questionable centra...