Global Investing

Developing countries must be eyeing with alarm the vast amounts of bonds that the euro zone and the United States are planning to sell this year and for years to come. Having borrowed large sums, starting a couple of years back to fund the bailout of  U.S. and European banks, developed economies must now raise the cash to repay the holders of those old bonds  – in market parlance, they need to roll over the debt.

The prospect of rolling such vast sums continuously in the current fragile market must be unnerving to say the least. But what about other countries who too have creditors to pay off — emerging markets in particular?  How will their deals fare if  U.S. and European bonds, seen usually as safer assets,  flood the market and drive up yields?

Not too badly, it would seem. The first reason is a simple matter of numbers. The United States needs to roll over one-fifth of all  its outstanding bills in 2010, — a whopping $1.6 trillion. The euro zone must find 1.3 trillion euros in the coming year — more than the recent Greek aid deal that took them so much time and hand-wringing to finalise.   Emerging markets’ needs are tiny in comparison.  ING Bank reckons they need as little as $75 billion to service their hard currency debt in 2010 and half of this has already been raised.  Should not be a problem, then.

The second reason is  more interesting: western governments are in this mess because in their rush to place cash cheaply most of the bonds they issued were short-dated, meaning they carry maturities of 2 years or less.  That is risky because short-term debt is more likely to fall victim to market turmoil.

So to compare: About a third of the euro zone’s outstanding bonds mature within two years and 20 percent expire in 12 months. The average maturity of the U.S. Treasury bill is just over four years. But average maturity on emerging hard currency bonds listed on the JP Morgan EMBI plus index is about 12 years.

They finally realised how serious it was. With stock markets tumbling, bond yields on vulnerable debt blowing out and the euro in danger of failing its first big stress test,  the European Union and International Monetary Fund came out with a huge rescue plan.

At 750 billion euros (500 billion from the EU; 250 billion from the IMF), the rescue package is the equivalent of taking a huge mallet to a loose tent peg.  Add to that an agreement among central banks to help out and the actual purchase of euro zone bonds by Europe's central banks and you turn the mallet into a pile driver.

That tent is not going anywhere for now.

Does this remind anyone of anything? How about a lot of small attempts to stop the subprime/Lehman crisis failing, only to be followed by the  likes of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program in the United States?

An upcoming book by Kaye Thomas explains in plain English the secret of succesful investing:  Turning money into more money.

 While everyone goes through good times and bad times, the 1980 Harvard Law School graduate suggests sticking to four main rules for success:

1) Create and maintain a regular programme of saving, in an amount that makes sense relative to your income level and financial goals.

Hundreds or even thousands of  ”active” fund managers are competing to add alpha to beat benchmark indexes, be it in stocks, bonds or alternatives.

The market is so efficient, historical performance is no guide to the future. It’s nearly impossible to find a reliable method to pick advisers who deliver the best industry returns year in and out. There are also costs, from visible ones such as management fees and custody and administration expenses to “below water” costs such as trading commissions (due to higher turnover), bid/ask spread (price to buy, another to sell) and market impact costs (larger buy/sell orders affecting price).

Given this, is there a point in investing in active funds? What about just diversifing your assets through passive indexes?

Reuters asset allocation polls for January are out and — perhaps not surprisingly — show global investors cutting back a bit on stocks. That would be expected given that world stocks are heading for a negative month and the likes of emerging markets have had a few days battering.

What was perhaps most interesting, however, was the fact that the pull back was not accompanied by any flight to safety. Both bond and cash allocations also fell slightly. The money went into other assets such as property and hedge funds.

Conclusion? No one is panicking. Some, such as Charlie Morris of HSBC Global Asset Management, even reckon that January’s pull back is nice and healthy, taking the froth off the market.

 "Cocos" has become the user-friendly name for a new type of hybrid bond created to help UK bank Lloyds raise money from investors to break away from a government insurance scheme for bad loans.

This nickname seems to have caught on in financial circles as it is much snappier than the bonds' official title: Enhanced Capital Notes.

The name Cocos seems to have derived from "contingent convertible," which describes one characteristic of these bonds - they convert to equity in certain circumstances.

Dubai returns to the fixed-income sphere for the first time in more than a year after raising about $2 billion from dirham and dollar-denominated Islamic bonds.

Confidence in the emirate had run aground earlier this year as investors bet on Dubai's state-linked entities not being able refinance debt. So far, this year it has met all its obligations and with the fresh issue booking about $6.5 billion from regional and international investors, Dubai's doomsday scenario appears to be vanishing. 

With much of the United Arab Emirates' oil coming from the largest of the emirates Abu Dhabi, investors have flocked to the capital this year as appetite for good emerging market debt revives. The spread between Abui Dhabi and Dubai widened at its peak to over 500 basis points in February, but Dubai government efforts to restore confidence -- kickstarted by the UAE central bank buying $10 billion of its bonds -- has helped spreads narrow to about 200 basis points.

Could it be that equity and bond investors are living in the best of all worlds at the moment?

Tim Bond, head of global asset allocation at Barclays Capital, has hinted that they might be. He says that history shows current conditions to be the best for both assets.

 Since 1925, we find that in those years in which GDP was above trend and inflation below trend, U.S. equities have delivered an average 10.6 percent real return, with 20-year Treasuries delivering a 5.2 percent real return. 

The stock market's penchant for emotional reactions that remind one of a roomful of two-year olds can never be underestimated. Major world central banks are pulling back on their efforts to provide liquidity to the financial system, and the U.S. equity market has flipped out, with stocks falling sharply after the news.Volatility has spiked as well, even though the banks' move is largely administrative, with demand for certain borrowing programs already diminished. Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ notes that "demand for dollar liquidity at banks offshore is sharply reduced now that the crisis has blown through. The amount of dollar borrowing in offshore centers is down sharply."

But equity markets aren't so easily swayed by reason. The move in stocks follows a similar sell-off late Wednesday, after the Federal Reserve's statement, which intimated that it would start to reduce the tools that it has employed in keeping things afloat. Joe Saluzzi of Themis Trading pegged the reaction as a predictable one from the notoriously self-interested stock market, saying that "now all the money printing crack addicts who are waiting for more of it are not getting their money printing and they are going to throw a hissy fit."

Housing sales fall, despite lower rates.

And this is with only the most gradual of responses from the Fed. Lou Crandall of Wrightson ICAP points out that the Fed, with the tweak to their statement Wednesday and today's action, is signaling its intention to shift away from life-support efforts, even though it is nowhere near raising interest rates.

The old lore about the best way to cure a hangover is with a few more nips of whatever it was you were imbibing the previous evening, commonly known as "hair of the dog."

The extension of this rally in stocks and just about every other asset identified with risk feels like a hair-of-the-dog situation. Between 2003 and mid-2008, easy flow of capital facilitated revelry in stocks, emerging markets, real estate, bonds, and high-yielding currencies.

REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

When investors invariably lost interest in an asset class where valuations could no longer be denied, they flocked to another - witness $150-a-barrel oil, $1,000 gold prices, and crazy gyrations in wheat and soybeans, of all things.