Cash is king for whipsawed emerging-market investors, says HSBC

Developing-nation equities are headed for their worst month since the March 2020 rout

Emerging-market investors whipsawed by volatility are sitting on a pile of cash and are waiting for markets to stabilise before getting back into higher-yielding assets, according to an HSBC Holdings survey. About 45 per cent of investors that the London-based bank polled have more than 5 per cent of their portfolios in cash and almost two- thirds of them don’t expect to deploy it over the next three months.

Their biggest concern: the prospect that markets will overreact to any sign that the Federal Reserve is reducing its support for the US economy by tightening policy. Investors have also become less