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Cape Town - For the second successive month South Africa has not been a favourite among international investors buying into emerging markets.
The monthly survey conducted among Merrill Lynch fund managers shows that in March South Africa was down a little on February.
The fund managers were asked whether they were overweight or underweight in a particular country. That is, whether they had invested more or less in terms of their own specific benchmarks or in line with with South Africa's weighting on the MSCI emerging market index.
Merrill Lynch indicated that in January South Africa abruptly shot up from an underweight position to being overweight. The country was suddenly the fourth most popular investment destination among the 15 countries reported upon.
But it quickly slipped back. It seems that investors swapped South Africa for Mexico.
For months Russia has been the most popular investment destination, having dethroned China mid-2009. For a few months China had occupied top position.
For some months China has still been overweight, but it lies towards the bottom of the list.
The survey was conducted among 365 large fund managers between March 5 and March 11.
Emerging markets remain the preferred region for global investors, with 33% being overweight in this respect.
Fund managers' sentiment for these markets continues to decline from the 54% peak in July last year.
- Sake24.com
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