Senior Portfolio Manager Anthony Kettle’s weekly BlueBay Emerging Market Debt commentary offers readers a concise yet wide-ranging macro overview. Kettle covers markets large and small, providing insight on how financial, political, and economic developments in one region affect markets elsewhere. Here is his latest insight.
Summary
It was a challenging week for risk markets as uncertainty about the Federal Reserve’s (Fed) intentions at its December meeting, combined with concerns over AI valuations, drove equities lower. This resulted in the S&P 500 falling by -1.9% and the Euro Stoxx 50 declining by -3.1%, while emerging markets (EM) equities also lost -3.7%. The US rates curve bull steepened with 5-year yields down -11 basis points (bps) and 30-year yields down -4bps. 10-year US real rates were -3bps lower to end the week at 1.80%.
In EM credit markets, spreads widened by 10bps for corporates and 8bps for sovereigns, while total returns increased by +0.1% in both cases. In the corporate space, the real estate and transport sectors outperformed, while the industrials and consumer sectors underperformed. In the sovereign space the notable outperformers were Venezuela, Ukraine, and Senegal. The biggest underperformers were Argentina and Gabon.
In the EM local markets, returns were down -0.8% with foreign exchange (FX) contributing -0.9% and rates +0.1%. In the FX space, the Dominican peso outperformed, while the underperformers were the Brazilian real, South African rand and Colombian peso. Meanwhile, in the rates space, Turkey and the Dominican Republic outperformed, and Hungary and the Czech Republic underperformed.
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