Three snapshots for Thursday
The European Central Bank kept interest rates on hold on Thursday. President Mario Draghi urged euro zone governments to agree a growth strategy to go hand in hand with fiscal discipline, but as thousands of Spaniards protested in the streets he gave no sign the bank would do more to address people’s fears about the economy
The divergence between Euro zone countries is starting to impact analyst estimates for earnings. As this chart shows earnings forecasts for Spain and Portugal are seeing more downgrades than Germany or France.
The inflation rate in Turkey rose to 11.1% in April, putting pressure on the central bank to raise interest rates:
Emerging beats developed in 2012
Robust growth from the emerging market basket in January was always going to be tough to beat, but research from February’s gains show just how strong these markets are performing against developed ones, and not just from the traditional BRICs either, research from S&P Indices shows.
Egypt has been a prime example. Following a bout of political unrest and subsequent removal of Hosni Mubarak after nearly 30 years in power, Egypt’s market returns have rocketed, climbing 15.3 percent in February on top of January’s 44.3 percent take-off.
Thailand, Chile, Turkey and Colombia are also on the to-watch list as these emerging lights have all flashed double-digit returns in the first two months of this year, while all twenty emerging markets included in the S&P data were up, gaining an average of 6.62 percent, making gains in the year-to-date a mouth-watering 18.95 percent.
Compare that with developed market returns of 4.6 percent in February, led by Nordic countries in particular Norway with (13.8 percent) in February, Denmark (13.5 percent) and Sweden (10.2 percent). Yet returns in developed markets were dragged down by Israel (-1.9 percent) and Greece (-2 percent). Overall developed markets grew 10.3 percent in the first two months of the year.
So taken together – equity markets have gained $1.6 trillion in February, which when added to January’s bullish run, clawing back all $3 trillion worth of losses in 2011 leading to the best start the S&P 500 has had since 1987.
Optimism should be checked, however. High oil prices supported by geopolitical pressure at the prospect of an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities and subsequent knock-out of a 3.5 million barrel per day production of crude oil could start to have a negative effect on markets, while Europe still faces high levels of debt and the challenge of reducing deficits, which could create a drag on the growth of emerging economies.
S&P says:
The haves and have-nots of the (energy) world
Nothing like an oil price spike to bring out the differences between the haves and have-nots of this world. The ones who have oil and those who don’t.
With oil at $124 a barrel, the stock markets of big oil importers India and South Korea posted their first weekly loss of 2012 on Friday. But in Russia, where energy stocks make up 60 percent of the index, shares had their best day since November, rising more than 4 percent. The rouble’s exchange rate with the dollar jumped 1.5 percent but the lira in neighbouring Turkey (an oil importer) fell.
Emerging currencies and shares have performed exceptionally well this year. Some of last year’s laggards such as the Indian rupee have risen almost 10 percent and stocks have jumped 16-18 percent. But unless crude prices moderate soon, the 2012 rally in the stocks, bonds and currencies of oil-poor countries may have had its day. Societe Generale writes:
As oil prices are now flirting with $125 per barrel, it is reasonable to start thinking about the potential impact on global emerging markets of an oil price shock and the currencies likely to gain the most from elevated oil prices and those that won’t….Russia appears as the clear winner of a potential oil price shock, and the rouble is therefore the best hedge against this risk
The bank advises its clients to buy the rouble and sell the currencies of oil importing Israel and Hungary. In Asia it suggests selling the Korean won. It also recommended exiting long positions on the Turkish lira.
Russia is the clear winner. Revenues from the energy sector provide half the state’s income and according to the graphic below from SocGen, oil exports account for 15 percent of Russia’s economy. At the other end of the spectrum are Taiwan, Korea and Turkey where oil imports make up between 7-12 percent of GDP.
How Turkey cut interest rates but didn’t really
How do you cut interest rates without actually loosening monetary policy? Turkey’s central bank effectively did that today.
I wrote this morning that the bank and its boss Erdem Basci were gearing for rate cuts, thanks to the lira’s steady rise (see the graphic) that should help tame inflation later this year (provided the global investment feel remains positive). But I also said a rate cut was unlikely to happen today. I was wrong — and right too. The central bank cut its overnight lending rate by 100 basis points to 11.5 percent while keeping the one-week repo rate — the main policy rate — steady at 5.75 percent.
So why is this not a real cut? Note that the former overnight rate hasn’t been used for over a month. Instead the central bank has been using the “corridor” between the lending and borrowing rates to adjust policy on an almost daily basis. The upper end of the corridor is in fact used more to tighten policy when there is a need to defend the lira, analysts point out. And most importantly, the central bank has already been providing funds at the cheaper 5.75 percent rate.
Morgan Stanley analyst Tevfik Aksoy writes:
This, in our view, did not come as a surprise, and should not be seen as a significant change in the monetary policy stance….The move, in our view, is not monetary easing but an adjustment to changing conditions…..We think that the difference between 12 percent and 11 percent are sufficiently high to stem currency depreciation in case global sentiment turns sour in coming weeks.
According to economist William Jackson at Capital Economics:
Clearly the central bank’s decision is a nod towards the more favourable external financing conditions
Turkey gearing up for rate cuts but not today
Could the Turkish central bank surprise markets again today?
Given its track record, few will dare to place firm bets on the outcome of today’s meeting but the general reckoning for now is that the bank will keep borrowing and lending rates steady and signal no immediate change to its weekly repo rate of 5.75 percent. With year-on-year inflation in the double digits, logic would dictate there is no scope for an easier monetary policy.
But there are reasons to believe the Turkish central bank, whose mindset is essentially dovish, is letting its thoughts stray towards rate cuts. Consider the following:
a) Governor Erdem Basci has already said he does not see the need for further policy tightening b)The lira has strengthened 9 percent this year against the dollar and is back at levels last seen in early September, thanks to almost one billion dollars in foreign flows to the Turkish stock market and well-subscribed bond issues. And crucially c) Global factors are supportive (developed central banks are continuing to pump liquidity and a bailout has finally been agreed for Greece) .
So some analysts are already weighing the likelihood of a pre-emptive rate cut in Turkey. ING analyst Sengul Dagdeviren writes:
Depending on the CBT’s view on capital inflows (ECB LTRO due soon, quantitative easing bias strengthening in G10, and Greece worries diminishing look supportive in that regard), the chance that it could surprise markets by lowering the upper band of the overnight interest rate corridor to 9 percent (down from 12.5 percent) remains.
The key to this will be the lira’s exchange rate.
Brazil going Turkey? Not quite
Could Brazil be on the cusp of adopting a Turkish-style monetary policy, J.P. Morgan analysts ask.
Many central banks have of late been forced to scale back interest rate cuts (here’s something I wrote on this topic last week) but one, Brazil’s Banco Central, remains resolutely dovish.
After four rate cuts it seems determined to take the official Selic rate into single-digit territory. Aldo Mendes, a deputy governor at the bank, told investors in London last week that he was confident of meeting the 4.5 percent inflation target this year. Friday’s data showing annual inflation at an 11-month low of 6.22 percent should have given policymakers some more ammunition.
Yet it looks unlikely that inflation can fall this year to 4.5 percent — on average analysts expect 5.3 percent. That’s better than last year’s 6.5 percent but government plans for a spending binge to boost growth are bad news for the central bank’s target. Inflation expectations are steadily trending higher — analysts surveyed by the central bank predicted 2014 inflation above 4.5 percent for the first time last November and now this is close to 5 percent, JPM analysts note. The risk for the central bank is it will lose credibility if it insists on keeping policy loose in the face of rising inflation expectations. There is no “free lunch”, JPM says:
Lower rates could mean credibility costs and in turn higher inflation….It seems the BCB is losing credibility as we see changes in the market’s inflation expectations for the medium term. Taking that and our strong activity forecast from the second quarter onwards we now believe it will take much longer for inflation to converge to the middle of its target range. Therefore we are raising our inflation forecast to 5.5 percent in 2013 from 5 percent previously.
Check out the following graphic from JPM on inflation expectations in Brazil:
Melancholia, social class and GDP forecasts in Turkey
An interesting take on GDP stats and those who make the predictions. An analysis of economic growth forecasts for several emerging markets over 2006-2010 has led Renaissance Capital economist Mert Yildiz to conclude that analysts of Turkish origin (and he is one) tend to be:
a) far more pessimistic about their country’s economic growth outlook than the foreigners, and
b) more pessimistic than economists from Poland, Russia, India or China are about their respective countries.
In fact, in each of these countries, foreigners provided more optimistic GDP forecasts than the locals, Yildiz found. What is surprising about Turkey is the extent to which local analysts have tended to underestimate growth — the figure below shows an average deviation of minus 1.7. In Russia, locals’ deviation was second-largest at minus 0.5.
Yildiz comes up with several explanations, including a very attractive one about the inherently pessimistic nature of Turks as a people.
“Huzun” or gloom is an integral part of Turkish culture, he says of the feeling of melancholia that permeate the novels of Orhan Pamuk.
Turkish music, dominated by dirges lamenting lovers’ heartbreak, is “the best indicator of our collective huzun,” he says.
Can Turkey confound the pessimists again? The numbers say no
Doomsayers have been prophesying Turkey’s economic boom to deflate into bust for many months now. The recent revival in positive investor sentiment worldwide ar has helped silence some voices. Others say it is a matter of time.
Data on Friday showed annual inflation accelerated from last year’s 3-year highs to 10.6 percent in January. It is likely to remain elevated at least until May, analysts predict. And trade data released this week indicate Turkey will likely have finished last year with a current account gap of around 10 percent of GDP last year — the biggest of any major developing economy. All this appears to indicate that the central bank will have to keep monetary policy tight and might even have to even raise rates, should the current resurgence in risk appetite fade. But rather optimistically, the government is still forecasting 4 percent growth this year. The IMF says 0.4 percent is more likely. A report today by Capital Economics, entitled “Turkish boom hits the buffers”, says recession is a cinch.
Neil Shearing, the report’s author, notes that imports of both consumer and capital goods have fallen by around $1 billion over a 12-month rolling period. That indicates a contraction in private consumption and fixed investment, he writes. Some of this could of course be down to the lira’s weakness last year, that aided some import substitution, Shearing acknowleges. But he says that all signs are that:
A combination of tougher external conditions and tighter domestic monetary policy have caused a two-year boom in Turkish domestic demand to come shuddering to a halt. Our base case is for a fresh bout of risk aversion to cause the lira to hit 1.90 per dollar over the next six months, causing interest rates to spike — and the Turkish economy to contract by 1 percent this year
With so large a deficit, Turkey will always remain hostage to the ebb and flow of global risk appetite. But the country has regularly confounded pessimists. The past month has seen the government as well as corporates return successfully to international bond markets, bringing much-needed dollars into the country. The lira has rallied 7.5 percent since the start of the year, recovering more than a third of last year’s losses. Should this continue, inflation will ease and financing the current account deficit will be less of a problem. But many suggest the lira’s days of strength could be numbered — JP Morgan analysts for instance suggest taking profit on some long lira positions. Turkey’s influential export lobby has already started complaining about the lira’s rise, they note.
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.
Developing vs developed. Ratings convergence goes on
Watchers of ratings agencies might be wondering if a golden period of steady credit upgrades for emerging economies is coming to an end. This week brought a ratings downgrade for Egypt and an outlook cut for Turkey. Hungary is teetering on the brink of having its rating cut to junk. Across the emerging world, countries are struggling with weaker growth, still-high inflation and falling investment. Debt ratios are rising. All this could bode ill for sovereign credit ratings.
But no fear. The so-called ratings convergence between developed and developing economies has some way to go yet. Egypt and Turkey may have received bad news this week but there were ratings upgrades for Kazakhstan and Georgia. Emerging countries are still more likely to be upgraded than downgraded. Debt-ridden rich nations on the other hand face ratings cuts, including possibly the mighty United States. JPMorgan points out that, emerging markets have enjoyed 35 upgrades this year, while developed sovereigns have suffered 32 downgrades and no upgrades. The bank predicts an additional 22 upgrades for the developing world in 2012.
“The convergence trend appears likely to continue, since a total of nine developed market countries remain on negative outlook or review for a possible downgrade,” according to JPMorgan. Emerging economies have received 133 sovereign upgrades since 2008, the bank notes. The last developed country upgrade that still stands? Sweden’s move up to AAA — achieved in 2004.
