The nature of the economic strength and stability of the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) countries is a less well known or understood fact among investors. There remains a wide gap between perceptions and reality.
Remember 1997 and 1998? Many investors, excited about the growth of Asian and emerging countries in the late nineties and invested their money found out about credit related risk first when the 1997 'Asian Contagion' occurred and was followed upon by the Long Term Capital Management bailout which unfolded in 1998. These events destabilized global markets and investors were taken by surprise as markets melted down.
For this reason, its important to go back to that time and re-examine Malaysia and Thailand, as examples, of where investors were excited by the rapid economic growth, but ignored credit risk, and very much to their expense. A decade ago (yes, a decade ago) when all of this was happening, only 3% of the grand total of emerging markets sovereign debt was rated as investment grade by any of the ratings agencies.
In 1997, only 10 out of 120 companies that form the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, had ADRs.
Excited by the G7 debt-financed growth, investors made bets that were inherently risky to their preservation of capital, not simply volatile. Circa 1997, emerging markets were in debt to the industrialized world by about $100-billion in the current account deficit column, and dependent on the kindness of their G7 financiers.
When the Malay and Thai governments were unable to meet current account obligations, and started printing money in order to meet them, the Fed blew the whistle upon discovering that sufficient reserves were not available to support the currency valuations. Hence the overnight slashing of Asian currencies.
At best, the general sentiment surrounding emerging markets has remained sceptical, and for this reason, as fundamentally sound as the BRIC countries economies are today, the market has been adopting the BRIC investment story very gradually. This time though, it is credit worthiness that is being overlooked.
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Source: Merrill Lynch, October 2006
Today, emerging markets sit atop a current account surplus in excess of $700-billion, and it is the industrialized G7 who are in debt, by the same amount. Longer term surpluses in excess of $3-trillion are to be found on the balance sheets of mostly the BRIC countries today in the form of Foreign Exchange surpluses, and trade surpluses. China alone now nurses a trade and forex surplus nearing US1.5-tillion. Russia, has managed to build up reserves of $450-billion as well as Putin's US$150-billion 'contigency' fund, set aside so that it may sidestep any kind of financial shock. India has amassed a forex surplus of around US$275-billion. Brazil's forex reserves now stand at US$178-billion.
BRIC countries have been financing the debt, and driving the growth of G7 countries for the last 5-7 years. China has emerged as the worlds manufacturing hub, while India has come on very strong as its counterpart hub in services, both providing Western firms access to inexpensive educated and -or- highly-skilled labour. Russia, under Putin, has successfully emerged as a highly profitable energy and raw materials producer, second in oil and gas reserves to Saudi Arabia. Brazil has changed the regional balance in the Americas by turning itself into the winds of east-west trade in hard and soft commodities trade and using its strength to bolster its new economic clout in relation to North America.
China's growth is less dependent on the health of the US economy, as is commonly perceived. A recent Economist article points out that China's true exports-to-GDP ratio is actually below 10%, that China has been quite successful to date at rebalancing its economy in favour of domestic growth as a driver. As for India, 87% of its GDP is consumed domestically, making it quite independent from the risk of the US threatened consumer hegemony. Russians are enjoying three times the disposable income of 7 years ago and driving consumption growth, as are Brazilians.
North American and European companies are looking to these consumers to drive demand and growth to their top and bottom lines.
In a word, things have changed.
They have changed in a very meaningful, very important way. The relationship that now exists between emerging markets and G7 countries is 'symbiotic.' and interdependent.
Source: Merrill Lynch, October 2006
Today, around 60-70% of emerging markets sovereign debt is investment grade rated and all 120 companies that form the key MSCI Emerging Markets Index have ADR listings.
In 1997-1998, the world's biggest Western banks took advantage of bailout condtions to take ownership of Asian banks, once protected by thousand year old protectionist laws. Today, powerful and wealthy Sovereign Weath Funds (SWFs) are bailing out the same banks, Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley.
On Wall Street in the past few weeks, the sums have been bigger and the actions more benign—at least so far. This week Merrill Lynch and Citigroup became the latest to get the sovereign-wealth treatment, picking up a further $6.6 billion and $14.5 billion respectively, much of it from governments in Asia and the Middle East (see article). Sapped by the subprime crisis, rich-world financial-services groups have been administered nearly $69 billion-worth of infusions from the savings of the developing world in the past
ten months, according to Morgan Stanley.
Commodities are not the only source of sovereign wealth. Many Asian emerging markets have been running current-account surpluses at the same time as they have been managing their exchange rates. As they have mopped up dollars, using government bonds, they have accumulated reserves. At first these went into safe, liquid assets like American Treasury bonds—the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 was still a recent memory and many countries were keen to amass reserves. But economies like China, South Korea and Taiwan now have more reserves than they need to defend themselves against shocks. Their governments understandably want to earn a higher return than Treasury bonds will pay, so they create a fund to manage their assets. Source: The Economist, Jan. 17, 2008, Asset-Backed Insecurity
It has become such that neither Emerging Markets nor the G7 can allow each other to be destabilized, as evidenced by the large, noted, SWF investments, as they have each other's economic 'lives' in the balance.
You might get the idea that emerging markets are correlated more to the US than they actually are, when you see that they have suffered like western stock markets, from a selloff. Their correlation is low, between .30 and .40, not zero or negative. There are those who would have us believe that the decoupling thesis is suffering from the same disease as the bull market. Those are probably the same folks, who last year began to re-write their theses from decoupling to recoupling to suit themselves this year, as the need to raise cash by selling the last two year's profitable trades became an increasingly inevitable requirement, in order to shore up balance sheets.
Our expectation is that the credit squeeze ailing the market will come to a reversal point, at some point over the next 2-4 weeks as the banks round the corner on the cash call that has forced the wholesale liquidation of emerging markets and commodities related investing.
Emerging Markets are strong, and some of their [inflationary] growth pressures may get somewhat solved by a slowdown in the US, in the form of an imported soft landing. This is by no means advice, but if you subscribe to this thesis, then there is reason to believe that there will be a recovery in the decoupling thesis, and thus emerging markets equities throughout the second half of the year, from the current lows.
First, however, until the cash call is complete, and the future of the monoline insurers (MBIA, ABK) is resolved in the form of perhaps a bailout, we may continue to see more downside.
Now may prove to be a good time to nibble at emerging markets and commodities again and add or gain exposure as they are far more attractively priced.Here is a selection of ETFs that provide both broad (diversified) and narrow exposure (country funds) to BRIC and emerging markets.
iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Index Fund (EEM)
PowerShares FTSE RAFI Emerging Markets Portfolio (PXH)
SPDR S&P Emerging Markets ETF (GMM)
Vanguard Emerging Markets ETF (VWO)
Dividend Emerging Markets ETFs
WisdomTree Emerging Markets High-Yielding Fund (DEM)
BLDRS Emerging MKTS 50 ADR Index Fund (ADRE)
Claymore/BNY BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) ETF (EEB)
streetTRACKS SPDR S&P BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) 40 ETF (BIK)
iShares MSCI BRIC Index Fund (BKF)
Latin America Regional ETFs
iShares S&P Latin America 40 Index Fund (ILF)
SPDR S&P Emerging Latin America ETF (GML)
SPDR S&P Emerging Europe ETF (GUR)
Middle East and Africa Regional ETFs
SPDR S&P Emerging Middle East & Africa ETF (GAF)
India - Barclays iPath India ETN (INP)
Disclosure: Long
