Global Investing

Someone’s loss is someone’s gain and as Russian and South African markets reel from the recent oil and gold price rout, investors are getting ready to move more cash into commodity importer India.

Stubbornly high inflation and a big current account deficit are India’s twin headaches. Lower oil and gold prices will help with both. India’s headline inflation index is likely to head lower, potentially opening room for more interest rate cuts.  That in turn could reduce gold demand from Indians who have stepped up purchases of the yellow metal in recent years as a hedge against inflation.

If prices stay at current levels, India’s current account gap could narrow by almost one percent of GDP in this fiscal year, analysts at Barclays reckon.  They calculate that $100 oil and gold at $1,400 per ounce would cut India’s net import bill by around $20 billion, bringing the deficit to around 3.2 percent of GDP.

Markets are celebrating these developments, with Mumbai’s stock markets jumping 2 percent today, the biggest one-day rise in seven months. Indian oil companies, which must supply subsidised fuel to the population, gained 3-4 percent on the day. On bond markets, 10-year government bond yields fell to six-week lows. Analysts at JP Morgan are advising clients to stay long Indian debt, predicting two interest rate cuts and a 50 bps fall in the  5-year yield. They also suggest buying 5-year overnight index swaps or OIS  (A swap that exchanges a floating overnight rate for a fixed interest rate). Currently at 7.17 percent, this should fall below 7 percent in coming months, they say.

Steve Ellis, an emerging debt fund manager at Fidelity Worldwide Investment says:

Inflation is finally biting Brazilian policymakers. The real strengthened around 1.5 percent last week without triggering the usual shrill outcries from government ministers. Nor did the central bank intervene in the currency market even though the real is the best performing emerging currency this year. The bank in fact shifted towards a more hawkish policy stance during its March meeting, a move that seems to have had the blessing of the government.

Friday’s data showed the benchmark consumer price index, IPCA,   up 0.6 percent for a year-on-year inflation rate of 6.31 percent. President Dilma Rousseff, who faces elections next year, took to the airwaves soon after to reassure voters about her commitment to taming inflation, announcing a series of tax cuts. That effectively is a signal that there is now no political constraint on raising interest rates. According to the political risk consultancy, Eurasia:

If the government doesn’t enact measures during the first half of this year to anchor inflationary expectations, Rousseff would run one of two risks. She would either run the risk of inflation starting to eat into the disposable income of families in a manner that could hurt her politically, or relatedly, put the central bank in a position of having to raise interest rates more aggressively later in the year to control inflation with more negative repercussions to growth.

The international focus is on  gold-producing country Mali after days of French air strikes on al-Qaeda-linked Islamist rebel strongholds in the north of the West African country. France expects Gulf Arab states will help an African campaign against the rebels,  and a meeting of donors for the Mali operation is due at the end of the month. West African defence chiefs are meeting today to approve plans to speed up the deployment of 3,300 regional troops.

Mali isn’t normally on the radar screens of international portfolio investors, with little external debt and no developed capital markets.

But it is Africa’s third biggest gold producer, with London-listed Randgold the biggest investor and other foreign firms such as Anglogold also having investments.

Global Investing has discussed in the past what a golden opportunity the Iranian crisis has proved for Turkey. Between January and July 2012 it ratcheted up gold exports to Iran ten-fold compared to 2011 as inflation-hit Iranians clamoured for the precious metal. Since August exports appear to have been routed via the UAE, possibly to circumvent U.S. sanctions on trade with Teheran.

The trade has been a handy little earner. Evidence of that has shown up in Turkey’s data all year as its massive current account deficit has steadily shrunk. On Friday, official data showed the Turkish trade gap falling by a third in October from year-ago levels. And yes, precious metal exports (read gold) came in at $1.5 billion compared to $322.4 million last October. In short, a jump of 370 percent.

But the days of the lucrative trade may be numbered, according to Morgan Stanley analyst Tevfik Aksoy. Aksoy notes that the gold exports can at least partly be accounted for by the considerable amounts of lira deposits that Iran held in Turkish banks as payment for oil exports. (Yes, there’s an oil link to all this. Turkey buys oil from Iran but pays lira due to Western sanctions against paying Teheran hard currency. Iranian firms use liras to shop for Turkish gold. See here for detailed Reuters article). These deposits are being steadily converted into gold and repatriated, Aksoy says.

Overseas investors, many of whom are creditors to the highly-indebted U.S. government, reckon a re-election of President Barack Obama would be best for world markets even if U.S. counterparts say otherwise.

For the second month in a row, Reuters’ monthly survey of top fund managers around the world was evenly split when asked whether a win for incumbent Democrat Obama or Republican hopeful Mitt Romney in the Nov. 6 presidential poll would be good for global markets.

The split was clearly dependant on whether the asset manager was based in the United States or not. Domestic funds, by and large, tend to favour Romney; overseas investors Obama.

Investors who have been buying up Venezuelan bonds in hopes of an opposition victory in this weekend’s presidential election will be heartened by the results of a poll from Consultores 21 which shows Henrique Capriles having the edge on incumbent Hugo Chavez.  The survey shows the pro-market Capriles with 51.8 percent support among likely voters, an increase of 5.6 percentage points since a mid-September poll.

Venezuelan bonds have rallied hard ever since it became evident a few months back that Chavez, a socialist seeking a new six-year term, would face the toughest election battle of his 14-year rule. Year-to-date returns on Venezuelan debt are over 20 percent, or double the gains on the underlying bond index, JP Morgan’s EMBI Global. And the rally has taken yields on Venezuela’s most-traded 2027 dollar bond to around 10.5 percent, a drop of 250 basis points since the start of the year.

But Barclays analysts are advising clients to load up further by picking up long-tenor 2031 sovereign bonds or 2035 bonds issued by state oil firm PDVSA:

Investors just cannot get enough of emerging market bonds. Ukraine, possibly one of the weakest of the big economies in the developing world, this week returned to global capital markets for the first time in a year , selling $2 billion in 5-year dollar bonds.  Investors placed orders for seven times that amount, lured doubtless by the 9.25 percent yield on offer.

Ukraine’s problems are well known, with fears even that the country could default on debt this year.  The $2 billion will therefore come as a relief. But the dangers are not over yet, which might make its success on bond markets look all the more surprising.

Perhaps not. Emerging dollar debt is this year’s hot-ticket item, generating returns of over 10 percent so far in 2012. Yields in the so-called safe markets such as Germany and United States are negligible; short-term yields are even negative.  So a 9.25 percent yield may look too good to resist.

As credit default swaps (CDS) for many euro zone sovereigns have zoomed to ever new record highs this year, Chinese CDS too have been quietly creeping higher. Five-year CDS are around 135 bps today, meaning it costs $135,000 a year to insure exposure to $10 million of Chinese risk over a five-year period. According to this graphic from data provider Markit, they are up almost 45 basis points in the past six weeks.  In fact they are double the levels seen a year ago.

That looks modest given some of the numbers in Europe. But worries over China, while not in

the same league as for the euro zone, are clearly growing, as many fear that the real scale of indebtedness and bad loans in the economy could be higher than anyone knows.  Above all, investors have been fretting about a possible hard landing for the economy, with the government unable to control  a growth slowdown.

Russian equities have had their worst week since early-December, with losses of over 6 percent. But don’t look too far for the reason — world crude futures have fallen to three-month lows around $114 a barrel on worries that U.S. and world economic growth may not be picking up after all.  They too have fallen 6 percent so far this week. Check out the following graphics showing how Russian stocks and its currency move in lock-step with oil prices:

If anything, the falls on Russian assets are outpacing the weakness on global crude oil markets in recent months, possibly because the jitters that caused last December’s massive falls have not been entirely overcome. Anti-government demonstrators are no longer hitting the streets but  with President-elect Vladimir Putin to be sworn in next week, fears are the  Kremlin may prefer squeezing more cash from energy companies to implementing the reforms the economy desperately needs.  Latest plans flagged on Thursday  to raise oil and gas extraction taxes would seem to confirm these worries and are hitting energy sector shares — half the Moscow index.

All this has widened Russian stock valuations to almost record levels against the broader emerging equity set.  But that is unlikely to entice buyers if the oil price stays where it is — after all half of Russia’s revenues come from oil and it needs an oil price of around $120 a barrel  to balance its budget. Chris Weafer, chief strategist at Troika Dialog puts it succinctly:

It’s not what you know but who you know. There are few places where this tenet applies more than in India but of late being close to the powers in New Delhi does not seem to be paying off for many company bosses.

Look at this chart from specialist India-focused investor Ocean Dial. It shows that since mid-2011 companies perceived as politically well-connected have significantly underperformed the broader Mumbai index. The underperformance has intensified this year.

According to David Cornell, portfolio manager at the fund, this is down to several factors such as The Right to Information Act which has helped curb unfettered corruption as well as shifting political power away from the centre towards provincial governments.  He says: