Jean-Charles Sambor

Market Outlook

EM Debt Outlook

Outlook

Latest EM Debt economic and market outlook. 

We maintain a modest long USD duration bias, expecting US inflation to keep moderating and the Fed to cut rates in 2H 25, despite headline tariff risk. We are keeping duration risk modest, but we reject the view that Trump-era policies are bearish for US duration. With the Fed likely to resume cutting rates in H2, we expect a significant wave of capital to rotate back into US Treasuries. We began the year with little exposure to generic EM beta and minimal duration-time-spread (DTS) risk, holding overall beta near 1. Instead, we focused on mis-priced idiosyncratic stories - China (select credits), Brazil, Egypt, Senegal, Lebanon, Venezuela and Ukrainian corporates. During the post-tariff sell-off we tactically added DTS in core names (Brazil, Mexico) and a handful of frontier credits, trimming those adds as spreads snapped back. We still run sizeable underweights in frothy markets - Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Côte d’Ivoire, Dominican Republic, Uruguay, Argentina sovereign and Costa Rica - and have bought protection on tight Chinese and Turkish credits should global risk appetite sour. More generally when it comes to spreads, we view EM spreads as attractive relative to other credit asset classes, and we expect fresh allocations as the “US exceptionalism” narrative fades.

At the start of the year we faded the broad-based consensus that President Trump’s agenda would be positive for the USD and went long EM FX. This was expressed through tactical trades in MXN, BRL, THB, IDR, KRW, PHP and PLN, complemented by relative-value pairs in Latin America and CEE to be exposed to idiosyncratic stories. We have since pared longs and initiated a tactical short in TWD, yet our core view is that USD weakness is a multi-year story from which EM FX will benefit as global portfolios pivot away from their overweight in US assets.

In local rates, the book carries a receiver/long bias overall, but we hold a bearish view on Chinese rates, expecting yields to grind higher alongside the recovery. We are also negative on Malaysia. We used recent dislocations to add to Brazil, Mexico, Korea and Indonesian local bonds. Our trading here remains opportunistic, taking advantage of the increased market volatility creating plenty of opportunities on the short and long sides.

Within frontier local currency, we have increased allocations to selected under-owned local markets with asymmetric profiles - Kazakhstan, Egypt, Nigeria (T-bills and bonds) and Dominican Republic paper.

Receive our insights

Sign up to receive regular investment updates and insight about products that interest you:

Sign up now