The performance of the $237 billion Total Return Fund over the past three years puts it ahead of 67 percent of similarly managed funds, gaining 4.7 percent over the period, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. It has returned 1.64 percent this year, placing it in the 55 percentile.
Fund Holdings
The proportion of Treasuries and government-related debt in the fund was 45 percent in December, compared with 37 percent in the previous month, based on the latest data from the company’s website. Gross held emerging-market bonds at 6 percent in the fund in December and raised non-U.S. developed debt to 6 percent, from 4 percent in November, the data show.
Eaton Corp. Chief Executive Officer Sandy Cutler said China’s economy is accelerating, buoyed by increases in consumer spending, bringing growth in line with the country’s public pronouncements.
China may have inflated the extent of its expansion by a factor of two in recent years, masking weakness as government infrastructure spending fell and individuals hadn’t yet picked up the slack, Cutler said yesterday in a telephone interview. The rebound means China’s indicators are closer to giving an accurate reading, he said.
Slow Growth
Eaton sells products across consumer and industrial markets, including hydraulics for construction equipment, auto parts, lighting for homes and buildings and electrical goods. The Dublin-based company does business in China across all those segments.
The worst start for emerging-market stocks in four years is creating a buying opportunity, according to Jim O’Neill, the former Goldman Sachs Asset Management chairman who coined the term BRIC countries in 2001.
“Some places in the emerging world have got some real problems, but that to be described as some kind of emerging- market crisis is frankly kind of ridiculous,” O’Neill said yesterday in an interview on Bloomberg Radio. “We probably are closer to a good opportunity to buy some of these things rather to join in the panic.”
‘New Normal’