Fixed Income

Turkey’s macro policy stance can hardly be called orthodox. And yet, corporate profit margins will contract meaningfully this year. The lira can also fall massively even if inflation eases from the extremely high levels – just as it did in the 1990s.

We assess where emerging markets debt is on a strategic and cyclical basis. We find it has benefited from local central banks boosting their inflation-fighting credentials and governments improving financial stability. As a result, EM debt is behaving less like a risk-on asset, changing the role it plays in a global portfolio. We also expand our asset allocation playbook by assessing how the asset class behaves across the business cycle. While EM debt is more than a risk-on play, we suggest investors stay cautious on a cyclical horizon.

Improved consumer morale will not compensate for the fading tailwinds to consumption. Neither will the wealth effects from higher stocks and home prices.

The Joshi rule real-time US recession indicator remains at an elevated 0.154 versus its recession event horizon of 0.200, indicating weakening US labour demand. With the last mile of US disinflation requiring labour demand to ‘catch down’ with labour supply, investors should watch the Joshi rule very closely to pre-empt a potential tipping-point. Plus: tactically long Portugal versus Europe, and wheat versus cotton; and tactically short USD/CLP, Qualcomm (QCOM), and Salesforce (CRM).