MacroScope

Do capital controls work?  After years of telling us that they do not, the IMF and World Bank reluctantly conceded last year they may not be all that bad and indeed in some cases they may actually help keep away some of the speculators who have in recent years been pouring into emerging markets.

Developing countries for the most part like foreign capital, indeed they rely on it for development. What they don't like is hot money -- short-term speculative flows which are widely blamed for causing past emerging market crises. So starting from October last year several of them slapped controls on some of this cash. There are signs these may be working.

Take the experience of two large emerging markets, Brazil and Indonesia. Brazil shocked foreign investors last October with a 2 percent tax on all flows to stocks and bonds. Nine months on, investors are still putting their cash there and Brazil has raked in millions of dollars thanks to the tax. But many fund managers, like HSBC's Jose Cuervo, who runs a $6 billion portfolio of Brazilian stocks, are buying American Depositary Receipts (ADRS) of Brazilian firms rather than stocks listed in Sao Paulo.  Because ADRs are in dollars and listed in New York, investors are getting exposure to Brazil but sidestepping the tax.  Brazilian firms continue to receive investment but Brazil's currency is not appreciating  like it was last year. A win-win all around.

Indonesia's measures, introduced in June, are relatively mild in comparison -- as part of its aim to push speculators out of  short bonds and into less volatile longer-dated debt, it now requires foreigners to hold these bonds for a minimum 28 days. That is bad news for hot-money investors who like to move in and out of a market quickly. The result -- by mid-July there had been a 37 percent surge in foreign ownership of longer debt and yields on the short bonds rose as foreigners pulled out. So most foreign fund managers haven't been scared off at all -- foreign holdings of Indonesian bonds recently hit record highs.

Indeed emerging markets have been lacklustre this year. Not really due to the capital controls but because people are worried about state of the U.S. and euro zone economies and prefer to keep their cash closer to home. But the Institute for International Finance says the fear of more capital controls is one reason  investment flows to emerging economies are likely to be lower this year than originally forecast.

Well, not in the long-run, no. You would be hard pressed to find an economist, investor or even politician who does not reckon the global shift in growth to Asia and Latin America is going to be the story of the coming decade, century etc.

But in the shorter term, strange things are happening. MSCI's benchmark emerging market stock index is barely in the black for the year. Even more surprising is that it is underperforming its developed market counterpart.

Many  economists and investment strategists are still beating the drum for emerging markets and a Reuters European Funds Summit in Luxembourg this week heard numerous cases of retail investors beginning to move into the sector, joining their institutional brethren.

Mohamed El-Erian, CEO and co-CIO of the world’s biggest bond fund PIMCO, says 2010 is the beginning of the multi-year resetting of the global economy.

In the period up to the crisis, there were two labels that dominated the world — Great Moderation and Goldilocks. Not too cold, not too hot. 2009 was about crisis management — the label was ‘whatever it takes’. The 2010 label is post-crisis. It’s not just about post-crisis. In our view, 2010 is about multi-year resetting of the global economy. It will be a bumpy journey to the new normal.

Speaking in London ths week, he warned that migration of wealth and growth dynamics of advanced economies to systemically important emerging economies must be on top of investor radar screen in 2010, as well as sovereign risks.

Let's not beat about the bush: the winners in this year's investment stakes were those who cashed out early in the financial crisis, looked at hugely oversold stock markets in March and jumped back in. The losers were those who spent too much time thinking about it or, worse, thought it was a good idea to put all their money in Dubai stocks and  Greek government debt.

For the winners, it all had to do with market timing. Buying MSCI's emerging market stock index at its March 3 low brought gains of close to 110 percent.  It was "only" a bit above 72 percent for the full year. World stocks as a whole gained around 30 percent for the year and nearly 75 percent from the March low.

Gold bugs grabbed a bit of the spotlight because of the record nominal highs for the metal. But with a gain for spot gold of around 24 percent, you would have done much better buying oil, which gained more than 75 percent.

It may end up sounding like a famous ball-point pen maker, but an argument is being made that Goldman Sach's famous marketing device, the BRICs, should really be the BICs. Does Russia really deserve to be a BRIC, asks Anders Åslund, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, in an article for Foreign Policy.

Åslund, who is also co-author with Andrew Kuchins of "The Russian Balance Sheet", reckons the Russia of Putin and Medvedev is just not worthy of inclusion alongside Brazil, India and China  in the list of blue-chip economic powerhouses. He writes:

The country's economic performance has plummeted to such a dismal level that one must ask whether it is entitled to have any say at all on the global economy, compared with the other, more functional members of its cohort.

A new exhibit called Economica: Women and the Global Economy is offering up an online look at how half the world’s population is making it through the current economic turbulence, in which, it says, women are “uniquely impacted”.

Presented by the web-based International Museum of Women, it consists of a series of slide shows looking at issues ranging from the impact of the U.S. mortgage crisis on families to survivng in Egyot with a shortage of bread to Middle East businesswomen redefining roles.

It also looks at credit for women in Latin America, growing debt in India and “Womb Economics”, which questions whether women are paying for China’s economic prosperity with policies that encourage abortion.

The good news for Africa when the global financial meltdown began was that its financial markets were generally so far behind the rest of the world that groups such as the World Economic Forum reckoned that there was little or no danger. A new paper, posted on the economic research website VoxEU, suggests that that might be a bit too optimistic.

Tilburg University economist and former World Bank official Thorsten Beck – along with the World Bank’s Michael Fuchs and Marilou Uy —  write that despite shallow financial markets, sub-Saharan Africa is unlikely to escape the repercussions of the financial crisis.

Indeed, they argue that the crisis is threatening what little progress has been made to reverse what they call the alarming superficiality of African finance.

Five things to think about this week:

STALLING RALLY
- The global equity market rally has stalled in June and is threatening to go into reverse. With this week effectively the last full week of the second quarter, the temptation for many funds to book profits on such a lucrative quarter will be high. Any knock on boost to volatility would pose more risks for some of the trades that looked the most attractive in a lower volatility environment, such as cyclical versus defensives plays, emerging markets, and foreign exchange carry trades.

POLICY, SUPPLY RISKS FOR BONDS
- How the U.S. Federal Reserve will respond to the interest rate market gyrations of the past month has been a key market talking point. Questions centre on whether it will expand the size of buybacks, whether there will be any change in the length of time the buyback programme lasts, whether the central bank makes any effort to unwind the rise in bond yields seen in the past months, and whether there will be any talk of an exit strategy. Another risk to the front end will be the Treasury refinancing, which resumes after a week of no supply and will be concentrating on the shorter end.

WHAT COLOUR ARE THE SHOOTS
- This week's data will show both whether the inventory rebuilding that was priced in over recent months is actually materialising and whether there are any other drivers of economic activity out there. The flash PMI in Europe and sentiment indicators will be particularly relevant in deciding on the latter issue, with consumer and income data out from both sides of the Atlantic providing an additional window on how domestic demand is shaping up.

People packing their bags and flying out to St Petersburg, Warsaw, and Prague this summer may not just be seeking an exotic vacation spot.

International property investors are inching back to emerging Europe, lured by prospects of higher returns in markets such as Poland, whose economy has held up relatively well in a global downturn, and Russia, which is bolstered by rising crude oil prices.

After posting strong growth for over 5 years, commercial real estate investments in emerging Europe had been a washout after Lehman Brothers’ collapse in Sept ‘08, with first quarter sales hitting a record low.

Five things to think about this week:

EYE ON CENTRAL BANKS
-  Investors will be on the lookout for any further signals on quantitative easing when the European Central Bank and the Bank of England announce their decisions on Thursday. Analysts see the ECB leaving rates on hold but pushing ahead with and possibly extending a plan to buy up to 60 billion euros in covered bonds. The focus will also be on growth forecasts for the next year and the message they send about the pace of any recovery.

COMMODITIES SUPERCYCLE, CYCLICAL SURGE
- Oil prices are nearly double their four-year low set in December and the Baltic Dry Index, which tracks rates to ship dry commodities, has risen more than 300 percent since the start of the year. Coupled with a weakening dollar, investors might be bracing for the return of the supercycle in commodities. The resultant inflationary pressures could push investors away from government bonds and into the arms of equities.

EMERGING DISCONNECT
- High-yielding emerging market currencies remain weak, weighed down by poor domestic growth prospects even as emerging equities rise along with their developed market peers, buoyed by hopes of a global economic recovery. The disconnect is likely to persist with governments, particularly in emerging Europe, looking likely to lower interest rates further.