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Monday, 16 May 2016

More warnings against betting on EMs too soon

It would be a “foolhardy” investor who believes all is now well in emerging markets after their more recent recovery, according to a piece on FT View. “Too much of the recovery seems to be owed to volatile factors, notably a rise in commodity prices and a debt-fuelled expansion in the first quarter in China, which could easily be reversed.” Serious structural reform, which would bolster a more long-term recovery, in emerging markets are “rare,” so when the “benign external environment” is removed or diminished, it “can lead to a marked slowing of economic growth and periodic turmoil in asset markets. The worst thing emerging markets could do is to repeat the complacency of the boom years and treat good luck as their due.”

Elsewhere, the FT is pretty sure that “EM recovery will not last, IIF data show.” The rally in EM, which began last quarter and continues in 2Q2016, isn’t real, says a top official at the Institute of International Finance: “What we have been seeing is a short-term cyclical rebound helped along by developed market central banks and by the People’s Bank of China. But the long-term structural headwinds are still there and getting stronger.” Unless, that is, we’re led out of the slump by “emerging market millennials” (folks born 1985-2000) who are set to do much better than their developed-market peers.

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