Currency rally drives sizzling returns on emerging local debt
Emerging market bonds denominated in local currencies enjoyed a record January last month with JP Morgan’s GBI-EM Global index returning around 8 percent in dollar terms. Year-to-date, returns are over 9.5 percent.
This is mainly down to spectacular gains on emerging currencies such as the Mexican peso and Turkish lira which have surged 7-10 percent against the dollar and euro this year. Analysts say the currency component of this year’s returns has been around 7 percent, meaning any portfolio hedged for currency risk would have garnered returns of just 2.5 percent.
The gains come as good news to investors licking their wounds after the index ended 2011 in negative territory. A mid-year rout on emerging markets pushed up local bond yields, often by hundreds of basis points and sent many currencies to multi-year lows.
Now, promises of more cheap cash from Western central banks has changed the mood, driving currency rallies. Adding to the optimism is the hope of more interest rate cuts in emerging markets, where inflation has peaked and growth is slowing.
Emerging markets facing current account pain
Emerging markets may yet pay dearly for the sins of their richer cousins. While recent financial crises have been rooted in the United States and euro zone, analysts at Credit Agricole are questioning whether a full-fledged emerging markets crisis could be on the horizon, the first since the series of crashes from Argentina to Turkey over a decade ago. The concern stems from the worsening balance of payments picture across the developing world and the need to plug big funding shortfalls.
The above chart from Credit Agricole shows that as recently as 2006, the 34 big emerging economies ran a cumulative current account surplus of 5.2 percent of GDP. By end-2011 that had dwindled to 1.7 percent of GDP. More worrying yet is the position of “deficit” economies. The current account gap here has widened to 4 percent of GDP, more than double 2006 levels and the biggest since the 1980s. The difficulties are unlikely to disappear this year, Credit Agricole says, predicting India, Turkey, Morocco, Tunisia, Vietnam, Poland and Romania to run current account deficits of over 4 percent this year.
Some fiscally profligate countries such as India may have mainly themselves to blame for their plight. But in general, emerging nations after the Lehman crisis were forced to embark on massive spending to buck up domestic consumption and offset the collapse of Western export markets. For this reason, many were unable to raise interest rates or did so too late. As the woes of the Turkish lira and Indian rupee showed last year, the yawning funding gap leaves many countries horribly exposed to the vagaries of global risk appetite.
There are some supportive factors however. The Fed’s signal this week that U.S. interest rates are unlikely to rise before 2014 shows that central banks in Europe and the United States will continue to gush money for now. So there should be enough cash available to plug the gaps in emerging nations’ balance sheets. Second, as growth eases, so will the deficits. For these reasons, Credit Agricole says the market will be forgiving of large current account deficits this year. But it warned:
What will happen once (developed market) rates are raised is another story, and emerging markets would better have fixed their main imbalances when the global monetary normalisation begins.
Hungary’s Orban and his central banker
“Will no one rid me of this turbulent central banker?” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban may not have voiced this sentiment but since he took power last year he is likely to have thought it more than once. Increasingly, the spat between Orban’s government and central bank governor Andras Simor brings to memory the quarrel England’s Henry II had with his Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, over the rights and privileges of the Church almost 900 years ago. Simor stands accused of undermining economic growth by holding interest rates too high and resisting government demands for monetary stimulus. The government’s efforts to sideline Simor are viewed as infringing on the central bank’s independence.
So far, attacks on Simor have ranged from alleging he has undisclosed overseas income to stripping him of his power to appoint some central bank board members. But the government’s latest plan could be the last straw – proposed legislation that would effectively demote Simor or at least seriously dilute his influence. Simor says the government is trying to engineer a total takeover at the central bank. “The new law brings the final elimination of the central bank’s independence dangerously close,” he said last week. The move is ill-timed however, coming exactly at a time when Hungary is trying to persuade the IMF and the European Union to give it billions of euros in aid. The lenders have expressed concern about the law and declined to proceed with the loan talks. But the government says it will not bow to external pressure and plans to put the law to vote on Friday. That has sparked general indignation – Societe Generale analyst Benoit Anne calls the spat extremely damaging to investor confidence in Hungary. “I just hope the IMF will not let this go,” he writes.
Central banks and governments often fail to see eye to eye. But in Hungary, the government’s attacks on Simor, a respected figure in central banking and investment circles, is hastening the downfall of the already fragile economy. For one, if IMF funds fail to come through, Hungary will need to find 4.7 billion euros next year just to repay maturing hard currency debt. That could be tough at a time when lots of borrowers — developed and emerging — will be competing for scarce funds. Central European governments alone will be looking to raise 16 billion euros on bond markets, data from ING shows. So Orban will have to tone down his rhetoric if he is to avoid plunging his country into financial disaster.
But this week the tussle has intensified as the central bank has shrugged off Orban’s call for more “growth-friendly policies” and raised interest rates by half a point. The rate rise, the second in as many months, brings interest rates to 7 percent, sparking rage in the ruling party. But the central bank, quite logically, argues higher rates are necessary to protect Hungary’s currency, the forint, from further weakness. And it has signalled it is fully prepared to raise rates again at the next meeting if required.
Hungary and the euro zone blame game
More tough talk from Hungarian officials on the ‘unjustified’ weakness of the country’s currency, which has dropped 11 percent against the euro this year to all-time lows.
This time, it’s central banker Ferenc Gerhardt arguing that the weakness of the forint is out of sync with economic fundamentals and blaming it on the debt turmoil in the euro zone.
Perhaps he should look a little closer to home.
Hungary’s drift from orthodox economic policy since the centre-right government took over the reins last year has made it the most exposed of eastern European economies.
The ruling party Fidesz swept into power promising to create a new social contract that would subject the economic system to the “popular democratic will”. Ironically, the policies of Prime Minister Viktor Orban have made Hungarian markets more sensitive to the global sentiment than ever.
Domestic investor participation in local bonds and stock markets has fallen since the government controversially seized private pension fund assets to boost state coffers this year.
Average daily trading volumes on the Budapest stock exchange have slipped 25 percent this year while non-resident ownership of local-currency bonds are at elevated levels — as high as 40 percent — and estimated to be worth a considerable 4.8 trillion forints ($20 billion)
@ Intriped
Buffet said to CNBC that he was looking to buy up equity of large eurozone companies if the price was cheap enough.
The bearish eurozone headline splatter is the usual market fodder directed towards softening those prices.
Wouldn’t get too excited unless you are a shareholder.
Interest rates rise in Kenya, Uganda. Hungary next
Recent weeks have witnessed an interesting split between countries that are raising interest rates to fend off runs on their currencies, and those cutting rates to spur on growth — check out my colleague Carolyn Cohn’s recent piece on this topic (http://tinyurl.com/4x58ny6) .The frontier economies of Africa fall into the first category — Kenya this week jacked up rates by an unprecedented 550 basis points to ward off a currency collapse, while Uganda’s benchmark rate was increased by 300 bps.
Big stable economies such as Australia, Brazil and Indonesia have cut interest rates. On Wednesday, Romania became the latest country to do so. But an exception is investment grade Hungary, which may soon join the ranks of frontier markets in currency-defensive rate hikes.
It may also soon lose its investment grade status –at least one of the three big rating agencies is expected to soon announce a cut to the sovereign credit rating. That fear has triggered flight from the forint and short-dated bonds, pushing the currency to 2-1/2 year lows and causing significant flattening in the yield curve. The situation hasn’t been helped by signs the government is cooking up another sceme to subsidise indebted small businesses. More is to come, many predict –a ratings downgrade could see investors pull at least $1.2 billion euros from local bond markets. ING Bank estimates. That would be 10 percent of foreigners’ Hungarian bond holdings and would send the currency into a fresh tailspin.
The forint is down 9 percent this year to the euro, and Hungarians, holding a vast stock of euro- and Swiss franc-denominated mortgages, cannot really tolerate a much weaker currency. A rate rise seems like the only way out, says Societe Generale analyst Benoit Anne who predicts the Hungarian central bank will be sufficiently alarmed by the pace and scope of the forint’s fall to raise rates by 200-300 basis points. That rekindles memories of the October 2008 crisis when the bank was forced into a 300 bps rate rise to support the forint. Swaps markets are currently pricing a 100 bps rate rise — most analysts say that is too conservative.
The fact is investors have turned their attention to Hungary away from Turkey, where the central bank has stabilised the lira via a stealthy policy tightening exercise that boosted implied yields on the lira to around 9 percent, the highest in emerging markets. Hungary will have to do the same, says Anne who advises investors to sell the forint and buy lira instead.
True, Hungary’s position is a bit different from Turkey’s. Turkey has a massive balance of payments deficit but Hungary has a small surplus, equating to about 2 percent of its gross domestic product. Central bank reserves cover seven months of imports, a comfortable position compared to Turkey which had enough cash to pay for just over three months of imports. All this means the central bank has the option of intervening in FX markets first to support the forint, according to HSBC analyst Murat Toprak, who says Hungary’s moribund economy simply cannot cope with higher interest rates. But Hungary’s central bank tends to avoid intervention – other analysts point out that even in 2008, it resorted to rate hikes rather than digging into its reserves to defend the currency.
from MacroScope:
New twist in Hungary’s Swiss debt saga. Banks beware.
A fresh twist in Hungary's Swiss franc debt saga. The ruling party, Fidesz, is proposing to offer mortgage holders the opportunity to repay their franc-denominated loans in one fell swoop at an exchange rate to be fixed well below the market rate. This is a deviation from the existing plan, agreed in June, which allows households to repay mortgage installments at a fixed rate of 180 forints per Swiss franc (well below the current 230 rate). Households would repay the difference, with interest, after 2015.
If this step is implemented and many loan holders take up the offer, it would be terrible news for Hungary's banks. The biggest local lender OTP could face a loss of $2 billion forints, analysts at Budapest-based brokerage Equilor calculate. Not surprisingly, OTP shares plunged 10 percent on Friday after the news, forcing regulators to suspend trade in the stock. Shares in another bank FHB are down 8 percent.
But Fidesz' message is unequivocal. "The financial consequences should be borne by the banks," Janos Lazar, the Fidesz official behind the plan says. The government is to debate the proposal on Sunday.
OTP and its peers could be forgiven for feeling aggrieved. They are already saddled with the highest financial sector taxes in Europe and will almost certainly see a rise in bad loans as the economy stagnates and more Hungarians lose their jobs. They are also picking up the cost of the three-year exchange rate cap for mortgage holders.
The proposed plan may also have implications for the forint -- ING Bank chief EMEA economist Simon Quijano-Evans notes that if 200,000 to 300,00 people to take up the new offer -- as the government apparently expects -- the forint will weaken as these people buy Swiss francs to repay their debts. Based on average loan size, over 2 billion euros worth of forints could be sold, he estimates.
Banks' main hope now must be the central bank. The latter has responded to today's proposal with a warning that solutions to the debt crisis must not threaten the financial system's stability.
But the Fidesz government's capacity to spring nasty surprises on the banking sector will make investors even more defensive about Hungary. Quijano-Evans for one advises staying away from Hungarian equities and unhedged forint positions, noting that "the risk of the government going ahead with some sort of plan to the detriment of banks has increased strongly."
EBRD to puzzle over E.Europe crisis
Ministers and bankers meeting at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development‘s annual gathering in London tomorrow and Saturday have a sorry mess to scrutinise.
By the bank’s own (revised) forecasts, its region of central and eastern Europe will contract by over 5 percent this year. Many countries in eastern Europe took too much advantage of western banks’ lending spree, and businesses and households are struggling to pay back foreign currency loans.
Falling commodity prices have hit countries like Russia and Kazakhstan, and a burst consumer credit bubble is risking double-digit contraction in the Baltic states and Ukraine.
The bank’s 61 country members together with the European Union and its development bank the European Investment Bank will be discussing how to cope with the crisis and manage any recovery.
They will be looking at whether to continue giving help to several EU member countries which were due to stop receiving EBRD funds next year. Some countries may also be asking for an increase in the EBRD’s capital from its current 20 billion euros, to cope with the crisis.
The EBRD operates in 30 countries, mainly in the former communist bloc, and most recently Turkey. Those countries may be wondering if the bank could have done more to help them through the crisis, and seek more help now.
The EBRD is probably doing all that it can, but with almost 30 countries in distress it sees the bottom of its financial resources.
Zeitgeist check
Some more bits and bobs to capture the current mood among investors.
– So far, 2009 is worse than 2008 for stock investors. MSCI‘s main world index is down around 17 percent in January and February. A year ago, it had lost around 8 percent.
– Eastern and central Europe are the new worries because of bank exposure to troubled economies. ”The travails in the east, like the vampires of folklore, are sucking the lifeblood from European markets and investor sentiment,” State Street suggests.
– Cross-border flows into the euro zone hit record lows in February, the same firm says.
– Denmark and Sweden join the gloomy gang. Year-on-year Swedish GDP lost 4.9 percent in Q4 2008 and Denmark’s was down 3.9 percent.
– We have just had the worst month ever for global corporate earnings revisions, according to Societe Generale number maestro Andrew Lapthorne. “Earnings estimates for 2009 saw a 14 percent cut last month, a rate of downgrades twice that seen during the worst moments of the early 1990s recession,” he says.
