Fund manager: People are abandoning investments indiscriminately.
Israel’s mutual fund industry has begun August on the wrong foot, with an estimated NIS 500 million in withdrawals. Paralleling the sell-off on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE), investors in mutual funds have been manic-depressive: on Tuesday, the withdrawals from mutual funds almost completely halted as the markets rose, but the withdrawals resumed yesterday.
Although high, yesterday’s withdrawals were only a third of the NIS 1.5 billion withdrawn on Sunday. Altogether, NIS 2 billion has been withdrawn from mutual funds this week, almost a tenth of the total amount deposited in them since January.
A mutual fund manager said, “Investors are abandoning their investments in mutual funds indiscriminately and without trying to restructure their portfolios. Most of the withdrawals were on Sunday and Monday. There were almost no withdrawals on Tuesday, but the sale orders resumed yesterday because the TASE again fell sharply.”
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on August 2, 2007
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