Global Investing

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.

But the effect has been most marked in emerging European local currency bonds — unsurprising, given economic growth here is weakest of all emerging markets and central banks have been the most pro-active in slashing interest rates.  Emerging European yields have fallen around 50 basis points since the start of the year, compared to a 20 bps average yield fall on the broader JPMorgan index of emerging local bonds, Thomson Reuters data shows.

The IMF today advised Poland to continue cutting rates “without delay” to boost the economy. That should give another leg-up to zloty bonds, where short-dated yields are already at record lows.

The flows have also been a boon to troubled countries such as Hungary that might otherwise have scrabbled for money. Instead, Budapest had by end-April fulfilled more than 65 pct of its 2013 funding needs and has since indicated it might not need to tap international bond markets again this year.

European equities are getting some investor interest again.

As the ongoing debt crisis erodes consumer spending and corporate profits, the euro zone’s share  in investors’ equity portfolios has fallen in the past year –Reuters polls show holdings of euro zone stocks at 25 percent versus over 36 percent a year back.  Cash has fled instead to U.S. stocks, opening up a record valuation gap between the European and U.S. shares. (see graphics below from my colleague Scott Barber). In fact no other region has ever been considered as cheap as the euro zone is now,  a monthly survey by Bank of America/Merrill Lynch found in June.

That could offer investors a powerful incentive to return, especially as there are signs of serious efforts to tackle the crisis by deploying the euro zone’s rescue fund.

Pioneer Investments has moved to an overweight position on European stocks. While Pioneer’s head of global asset allocation research Monica Defend stresses the overweight is a small one compared to, say, its position in emerging markets, she says:

Markets are down again today (MSCI world index down 0.7 pct so far this morning) and the market overall is nearing a bear market territory again (from a three-year high hit in May).

But asset managers are starting to look forward.  JPMorgan Asset Management reckons that if one assumes the current bear market for most equity indices started in 2000 and that the the trend of the previous experiences is to be repeated, then the current environment should be ending around 2014 (By the way, those who predict stock market cycles with sunspots activity reckon the year 2012 or 2013 is the bottom, but that’s a different story.)

But 2014 does seem a long way off.

“While this may sound depressing from 2011, we hasten to add that we are not expecting the ongoing bear market to result in continued downside, but rather in persistence of broad range-trading prior to a sustained breakout to the upside,” Neil Nuttal of JPM AM writes.

It’s the year of Tiger in the Lunar calendar. JP Morgan Asset management says the Tiger year opens with a bang only to peter out with a whimper — it is a year of fluctuating fortunes with people doing dramatic things, often on the spur of the moment.

“In short, it is a year of massive change, but it can also be a year to inject new life into a losing cause,” the asset manager says.

Here are some events that happened in previous Tiger years, listed by JPM:

1950: The (then) USSR claimed to have developed the atomic bomb, while the Korean War began with the North invading the South.