We think developed market (DM) monetary policy may be a threat to emerging market (EM) assets for some time yet . Hawkish monetary policy has arguably been the biggest headwind for global financial markets this year. Rapid upward revisions to …
31st August 2022
Headline inflation has risen further across the region in recent months. This has been most pronounced in the non-Gulf economies which have been particularly exposed to spillovers from the war in Ukraine due to their positions as large net commodity …
30th August 2022
The region faces a busy political calendar. Chileans head to the polls on Sunday to vote on a new constitution which would usher in sweeping changes to the country’s current economic model. While the latest polls suggest that the charter will be …
GDP data for Q2 (Q1 of FY22/23) due next week should show that the economy grew at a robust pace last quarter despite the onset of monetary policy tightening. And more timely indicators suggest that the economy has held up well so far in Q3 too. The …
26th August 2022
The rebound in the prices of “risky” assets has stalled recently and we expect it to go into reverse over the rest of this year as economic growth in many major DMs disappoints and appetite for risk deteriorates. Risky assets generally continued to …
The Nordic and Swiss economies performed relatively well in Q2, while prime rents showed further rises in Scandinavian office and industrial markets. However, the economic outlook has darkened, which will weigh on rental growth further ahead. And a …
Higher interest rates and a weaker economic and property outlook contributed to a rise in all-property yields in Q2. While office and industrial rents still made solid gains, this increase in yields resulted in a slowdown in capital value growth. …
25th August 2022
Q2 data showed a mixed picture across the three sectors. For offices, the northern coastal markets continue to lag, with rent growth turning positive but still weaker than most other markets. Houston had an awful quarter for demand, and new supply …
24th August 2022
The surge in interest rates so far this year has contributed to a sharp decline in home sales but, so far at least, that has not weighed on construction activity. Housing starts averaged 279,000 annualised between May and July, 10% higher than the prior …
The growth outlook for the emerging world has taken a turn for the worse. The latest activity data for China suggest that the post-lockdown recovery has lost steam. The PBOC has responded by lowering interest rates and we expect further easing, but we …
23rd August 2022
After a year-long contraction in real disposable incomes, the sharp declines in energy prices over recent weeks are finally providing some relief. Alongside continued strong employment growth, we calculate that the drop in retail gasoline prices to …
22nd August 2022
As the economy slowed in Q2 and interest rates rose, investors appear to have become less willing to compete property yields lower and investment volumes look close to turning. While occupier demand was steady in most sectors, there were signs of a …
While quarterly rental rises surprised on the upside in Q2, property yields also rose sooner than expected. This meant all-property capital values barely grew on the quarter and slowed to around 5% y/y, from almost 7% y/y in Q1. (See Chart 1.) Given Q2 …
Australia’s house prices are now falling at a similar rate as they did during the 2017-19 downturn, which was the largest in the country’s modern history. (See Chart 1.) Home sales remain well above pre-pandemic levels, building activity is holding up …
There have been growing signs that we are at the turning point in global inflation. Commodity prices and shipping costs are down both in y/y and level terms, while product shortages have alleviated as softer demand and fewer bottlenecks have opened up …
12th August 2022
We’ve been warning for some time that CPI inflation would rise further than most people expect, triggering a recession. The prospect of even bigger rises in utility prices on 1 st October and in the first half of 2023 than we have pencilled in suggests …
10th August 2022
With a record virus wave sweeping across the country and consumer confidence slumping, we’re slashing our forecast for Q3 consumption growth from 0.8% to 0.2%. While the government has refrained from declaring another state of emergency, spending was …
8th August 2022
Euro-zone GDP increased by more than we had expected in Q2 as reopening effects boosted the services sector, particularly in the southern countries. But things have already taken a turn for the worse. Business surveys are pointing to a big drop in …
4th August 2022
Given our forecast that the Bank of England will raise interest rates from 1.25% now to a peak of 3.00%, we still think that gilt yields have further to rise. However, with attention in the markets turning towards the prospect of lower inflation and …
29th July 2022
We now think that the reduction in consumer real incomes due to high inflation will push the economy into recession this year. But the Bank of England is likely to have to keep on raising interest rates regardless in order to bring inflation back down to …
The economic outlook has deteriorated across the region. Inflation is soaring and monetary conditions are tightening, which is weighing on households’ real incomes and spending power. The latest surveys show consumer confidence tanking and economic …
28th July 2022
The mortgage boycotts are a double threat to developers and to the housing market. They have drawn attention to the problem of cash-strapped developers being unable to complete properties that they have already sold, which is putting off new homebuyers. …
27th July 2022
For a major net oil exporter, Nigeria’s worsening economic struggles in the current high oil price environment are striking. Low oil production, which was 30% below the country’s OPEC+ quota in June, has curbed oil export revenues. Coming alongside …
Latin American economies held up well in early part of this year, helped by the surge in commodity prices brought about by the war in Ukraine. But there are signs that activity is now weakening. Timely monthly activity indices fell in m/m terms in five of …
The recently-released activity data from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, and Bahrain confirmed that strong hydrocarbon production supported rapid economic growth at the start of this year. And strong growth is likely to be sustained over the coming …
The extent of the downturn in the housing market and broader residential investment will determine whether the economy enters a recession in the next 12 months (see our Canada Economics Outlook ), and in that respect there has been some good news in the …
26th July 2022
GDP figures for Korea released earlier today showed economic growth accelerated in the second quarter thanks to a strong rebound in private consumption as the economy enjoyed a reopening bounce. This follows the scrapping of most of the remaining COVID-19 …
With inflation now set to rise to 12% by October, interest rates on the rise and the economy on the brink of recession, the 21-month streak of yield compression is at an end. (See Chart 1.) Coupled with subdued rental growth, that means all-property total …
22nd July 2022
The latest population projections released by the UN this month show that India will overtake China as the world’s most populous nation in 2023 (see Chart 1), a touch earlier than previously expected. The UN also projects that India’s working-age …
21st July 2022
The incoming activity data now show clearer signs of weakness, particularly in the most interest-rate sensitive components of spending. But there are still few signs of that moderation morphing into a recession. The rise in mortgage rates has weighed on …
The minutes of the RBA’s July meeting showed that the Bank debated a smaller 25bp rate hike but ended up hiking rates by 50bp. Those minutes also included a discussion of the level of the neutral interest rate, which will come into touching distance …
Most large EMs are weathering the environment of rising global interest rates and a strong dollar relatively well. That said, countries with large current account deficits , most notably Chile and Hungary , are finding their currencies in the crosshairs, …
18th July 2022
The upward trend in mortgage rates took a breather over the past month, but that didn’t provide much of a boost to housing market activity. Existing home sales have fallen for four months in a row, and a sharp decline in the Fannie Mae Home Purchase …
15th July 2022
Recent data suggest that global economic activity was even weaker than we initially thought in Q2, with GDP probably contracting in several major economies including the euro-zone, UK and China. The earliest signs for Q3 are not good, with business …
13th July 2022
Overview – Non-energy commodities prices generally fell in June on the back of concerns about the outlook for demand amid global monetary tightening and slower economic growth. Energy prices may also fall a little from here, but constrained supply will …
6th July 2022
The latest data suggest that underlying inflationary pressures in the euro-zone remain intense. Although core inflation edged down from 3.8% in May to 3.7% in June, this appeared to be down to temporary policy changes in Germany that will weigh on …
We expect the yields of emerging market (EM) local-currency (LC) and dollar sovereign bonds to rise further and EM equities to lose more ground as “risk-free” rates continue to climb and global economic growth disappoints . EM bonds and equities have come …
30th June 2022
The hawkish turn by DM central banks over the past month has further soured investor risk appetite, and capital inflows into African economies are likely to have slowed. Countries with large external financing requirements, and heavy debt burdens …
While the strength of the US dollar already reflects expectations that the Fed will continue its aggressive policy tightening, we think that disappointing global growth and weak risk sentiment will underpin further strength in the greenback this year. …
The period since the publication of our last Asset Allocation Chart Book on 31 st May has brought yet more pain for investors. Between then and 28 th June, the returns from all the headline indices that we track, bar USD cash, were negative. That includes …
Inflation has continued to beat expectations across Emerging Europe over the past month, reaching rates not seen in decades in most countries. It is now weighing more heavily on consumer confidence, and the surprise inflation releases for May prompted …
29th June 2022
The tight labour market is putting upward pressure on wages, with the Labour Force Survey showing a strong 1.0% m/m rise in average hourly earnings in May. While the annual rate of wage growth, at 3.9% y/y, remained lower than before the pandemic, base …
We think developed market (DM) government bond yields will rise further while equity and corporate bond prices fall further, as central banks press ahead with tightening and the global economy slows. The past few weeks have brought hawkish surprises from …
High inflation seems to be causing growing unrest in the region, which threatens to be economically disruptive and raise fiscal concerns. Recent protests in Ecuador have hit its oil sector hard, while truck drivers in Peru are about to embark on a strike. …
28th June 2022
The Omicron virus wave in China appears to have eased global shipping bottlenecks rather than worsened them as many had feared. Firms were able to re-route shipments through other ports to avoid disruption in Shanghai. And weaker goods demand domestically …
After more than two years in the doldrums, Thailand’s tourism sector is finally showing signs of life. Arrivals in May reached 520,000 – a 77% increase from the previous month and 19% of the level reached in the same month of 2019. Spending by foreign …
27th June 2022
Risk-off sentiment and the sell-off in EM financial markets have hit the Middle East and North Africa hard. Having been the top regional performer earlier in the year, the MSCI Arabian Markets Index has fallen by nearly 20% since mid-April. Sovereign …
24th June 2022
The surge in interest rates, plunge in the stock market and weakness of consumer confidence have fuelled fears of an impending recession, but there is still little sign of that in the incoming economic data. The coincident indicators used by the NBER to …
23rd June 2022
Having surged in recent months, there are some tentative signs that EM inflation is nearing a peak. Our measure of aggregate EM inflation was steady at 7.0% y/y between April and May and some indicators of pipeline price pressures have eased. But even so, …
We haven’t changed our forecast that the Bank of England will raise interest rates from 1.25% now to a peak of 3.00% by the middle of next year. But we do now think that a number of other central banks will raise interest rates faster and to higher levels …
