Emerging Markets: the love story
It is Valentine’s day and emerging markets are certainly feeling the love. Bank of America/Merrill Lynch‘s monthly investor survey shows a ‘stunning’ rise in allocations to emerging markets in February. Forty-four percent of asset allocators are now overweight emerging market equities this month, up from 20 percent in January — the second biggest monthly jump in the past 12 years. Emerging markets are once again investors’ favourite asset class.
Looking ahead, 36 percent of respondents said they would like to overweight emerging markets more than any other region, with investors saying they would underweight all other regions, including the United States. Meanwhile investor faith in China has rebounded with only 2 percent of investors believing the Chinese economy will weaken over the next year, down from 23 percent in January. China also regained its crown of most favoured emerging market in February.
Last year, the main EM index plummeted more than 20 percent as emerging assets fell from favour. So what is the reason for this renewed passion in 2012?
Firstly December’s LTRO — a multi-billion euro liquidity arrow from the cupids at the ECB has revived investor appetite for riskier emerging assets, boosting the index to around six-month highs since the start of the January. A second significant factor behind the resurgence in risk sentiment is that the market is daring once again to hope for an improvement in global growth, says Gary Baker, BofAML Global Research head of European equities strategy.
The big beneficiaries of all this have been emerging markets. It’s not just about liquidity. Clearly the actions of the ECB have been vitally important… but what you’ve also seen is an improvement in global growth optimism. If optimism over growth is improving then there may well be a more fundamental underpinning to the movement.
So is investors’ new-found love for emerging assets a passing flight of fancy or a true sign of commitment?
The significant monthly improvement in market sentiment towards emerging markets and the 44 percent level of investors overweight emerging markets are both events which have historically coincided with short-term underperformance by emerging equities, Baker says.
Inside the Reuters investment polls
The headline news from our Reuters asset allocation polls this month was that not much has changed from December in terms of overall investment positioning, but that there was a decided shift from emerging markets and European stocks to North America.
But buried in the numbers were a couple of other things:
– Bonds are decidedly unpopular among fund managers. The overall global allocation was the lowest since February.
– Bond underweights have also been getting heavier and heavier since summer and now reflect significant bearishness.
– Within bond portfolios, however. U.S. debt was on the up, at levels not seen for at least 12 months. This contradicts the widely held view that Treasuries are losing their appeal.
– High yields are also clearly popular with a shift to “junk” from investment grade.
The Treasury finding is a bit strange, but other than that there was nothing in there, really, to disturb the proponents of the risk rally.
