U.S. REITs Continued To Rebound Last Week As Stocks Tumbled

 | Aug 05, 2019 07:44AM ET

Real estate investment trusts (REITs) led the report that REITs are exhibiting a fresh bout of “resilience.” A review over the weekend of the asset class noted that “after a sluggish end to 2018, real-estate investment trusts are showing promise again.”

By contrast, stocks in emerging markets fell hard last week. Vanguard FTSE Emerging Markets (VWO) tumbled 4.7%–the ETF’s deepest weekly loss since May. The latest round of selling is linked with the escalation in the US-China trade conflict via President Trump’s decision on Friday to slap yet more tariffs on Chinese imports.

“The risk to emerging-market assets in the near term is skewed to the downside,” says Patrick Wacker at UOB Asset Management in Singapore.

The start of this week’s trading doesn’t look any kinder on the trade-war front following the slide in China’s currency, which crossed a politically sensitive point vs. the US dollar on Monday. “I think this is clearly a retaliation that in the past China has refrained from doing,” advises Claudio Piron, co-head of Asia rates and foreign exchange strategy at Bank of America Merrill Lynch (NYSE:BAC) Global Research.