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from Global Investing:
South African rand slides as labour unrest grows
The South African rand has lost most ground amongst emerging market currencies, according to Reuters data, falling almost 10 percent so far this year to hit 4-year lows against the dollar.
That is perhaps not so surprising given the country's high level of dependence on the minerals and mining sectors, which have been disrupted by labour strikes along the same lines evident in the summer of 2012. Lonmin, the world's third largest producer of metal, said it stopped its production of its Marikana mine near Rustenburg following strikes over wages.
Net commodity exports - Morgan Stanley and UNCTAD
With the metals and mining sectors accounting for 60 percent of South Africa's exports, the strong relationship between these sectors and the rand is not surprising. A falling currency has a knock-on effect of facilitating inflation, especially as imports grew faster than exports for the first quarter of 2013. Meanwhile platinum prices have been in a gradual downwards trend since February.
The currency could be in for a deeper slide if mining companies' wage negotiations are not made within the July 1 timeframe, while the central bank is not expected to act. According to Phoenix Kalen, CEEMEA Economist at RBS:
from Global Investing:
Emerging European bonds: The music plays on
There seems to be no end to the rip-roaring bond rally across emerging Europe. Yields on Turkish lira bonds fell to fresh record lows today after an interest rate cut and stand now more than a whole percentage point below where they started the year.
True, bonds from all classes of emerging market have benefited from the flood of money flowing from central banks in the United States, Europe and Japan, with over$20 billion flowing into EM debt funds since the start of 2013, according to EPFR Global. Flows for the first three months of 2013 equated to 12 percent of the funds' assets under management.
from Breakingviews:
Ailing South Korea needs monetary remedy
By Andy Mukherjee
(The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own)
The Bank of Korea is making a big mistake by not cutting interest rates more aggressively. A weaker Japanese yen and tepid global demand are squeezing the country’s exporters from Hyundai Motor to steelmaker Posco. Though demand from China is still growing, shipments to Europe are falling, while those to the United States have stalled (See graphic).
from Global Investing:
Japan’s big-money investors still sitting tight
More on the subject of Japanese overseas investment.
As we said here and here, Japanese cash outflows to world markets have so far been limited to a trickle, almost all from retail mom-and-pop investors who like higher yields and are estimated to have 1500 trillion yen ($15.40 trillion) in savings. As for Japan's huge institutional investors -- the $730 billion mutual fund industry and $3.4 trillion life insurance sectors -- they are sitting tight.
If some are to be believed, the hype over outflows is misguided. Morgan Stanley for one reckons Japanese insurers' foreign bond buying may rise by just 2-3 percent in the next two years, amounting to $60-100 billion. Pension funds are even less likely to re-balance their portfolios given large cash flow needs, the bank said.
from Global Investing:
Tokyo Sonata calls the tune for investors
The jury may be out on whether Messrs. Abe and Kuroda will succeed in cajoling the Japanese economy from its decades-long funk but the cash is betting they will. Domestic and foreign investors have stampeded for Tokyo equities, and Morgan Stanley has been crunching the numbers.
Since 2005, Japanese investors built up a 14 trillion yen (over $140 billion) portfolio of foreign equities. But between January-March 2013, they offloaded a third of this -- about $39 billion. Going back to July 2012 when they first started bringing cash home, the Japanese have sold $53 billion in foreign equities, or 36 percent of equity holdings.
from Breakingviews:
Return to glory days may elude Japan’s automakers
By Antony Currie
(The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own)
The weakening yen is good news for Japan’s automakers. The more than 20 percent drop in the currency’s value against the dollar since early October will boost profit from overseas sales - and probably market share, too. A return to the glory days of 2006, though, is likely to prove elusive.
from Breakingviews:
IMF crowd should cut Japan some slack
By Christopher Swann
(The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own)
The crowds gathering for the International Monetary Fund’s spring meeting should cut Japan some slack. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s economic policies are in for a drubbing at the shindig in Washington, DC. IMF officials have been bemoaning Japan’s “risky” fiscal stimulus while the U.S. Treasury has been grumbling about the weaker yen. But Japan was right to act.
from Nicholas Wapshott:
Gold’s decline shakes the true believers’ faith
The dramatic slide in the price of gold in the past week has reversed a rise that for more than a decade has been steady and seemingly inexorable. The sudden fall ‑ in which prices plummeted 9 percent, to $1,347.40 an ounce, on Monday, the biggest two-day loss percentage since 1983 ‑ has put goldbugs, who are by definition pessimistic lovers of certainty, into a state of high anxiety. When the commodity of last resort so conspicuously fails to hold its value, the world becomes scarier place.
There is room, however, for a small celebration: that the Cassandras have been caught short. Their simple remedy of faith in the abiding value of gold as a hedge against an otherwise treacherous, inflated market has been shown to be flawed.
from Global Investing:
Amid yen weakness, some Asian winners
Asian equity markets tend to be casualties of weak yen. That has generally been the case this time too, especially for South Korea.
Data from our cousins at Lipper offers some evidence to ponder, with net outflows from Korean equity funds at close to $700 million in the first three months of the year. That's the equivalent of about 4 percent of the total assets held by those funds. The picture was more stark for Taiwan funds, for whom a similar net outflow equated to almost 10 percent of total AuM. Look more broadly though and the picture blurs; Asia ex-Japan equity funds have seen net inflows of more than $3 billion in the first three months of the year, according to Lipper data.
from Breakingviews:
Weaker yen won’t halt Japan Inc’s overseas spree
By Peter Thal Larsen
(The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own)
A weaker yen won’t reverse Japan Inc’s overseas M&A drive. While a strong currency, low interest rates and a stagnant home market fuelled an international shopping spree in 2012, the promise of a domestic revival under new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has caused buyers to temporarily put away their wallets. But even so-called Abenomics can’t cure Japan’s ageing and shrinking population.
