Emerging markets stocks are on track to close today their best month since March 2016 as EM investors “are shrugging off worries about the potential negative impact of a Donald Trump presidency to join the wider stock market boom,” the Financial Times notes, saying the MSCI EM Index has “hit its highest level since October … The index, which covers 85 per cent of the free-float adjusted market capitalisation in the 23 largest emerging markets, has climbed 6.3 per cent in January, putting it on track for its best month since March by a comfortable margin.”

But will it last? Nomura is reasonably typical of those arguing that “‘America First’ means emerging markets last.” Nomura argues that in the short term, EM will be hit by “a faster Fed hiking cycle and a strengthening of the USD, which exposes emerging markets … to capital outflows and credit defaults. Also boding ill for many (but not all) emerging economies, it says, are “the triumvirate of rising U.S. trade protectionism, tougher immigration rules and a reassessment of U.S. foreign policy positions.”

With that in mind, Trump’s apparent preference for a weaker greenback would be good for EM, CNBC argues in a roundup of analyst views that suggests “Like the premature report of Mark Twain’s death more than a century ago, rumors of the demise of emerging market growth in the era of President Donald Trump may be greatly exaggerated.” Want more? Eaton Vance’s Michael Cirami did the duty on Bloomberg yesterday (watch, runtime: 4:34). The upshot? Nobody has a clue.

Other stories from regional and global EM and frontier markets worth noting this morning:

• Lebanon is the latest challenger to Egypt’s position as a potential eastern Med gas hub, lawyer Niazi Kabalan from Pinsent Masons writes for the Financial Times — but Beirut will need to get its regulatory regime right.
• Former IMF and IIF official George Abed argues in the same newspaper that it might be time for Saudi Arabia to start mulling a move away from the SAR’s peg to the USD.