The difficulty in any discussion on frontier markets is in first defining what constitutes a Frontier Market (FM) and what characteristics distinguish it from an Emerging Market (EM). Various investment houses offer different perspectives on the qualifying criteria, ranging from empirical data, such as GDP per capita, levels of foreign investment or daily market trading volumes, through
The €1bn of net outflows from emerging market equity funds in December brought total net redemptions from the asset class to €36.3bn in 2015. Though emerging markets elsewhere suffered most heavily from the commodity price slump, Asia was suffering the biggest blows in 2015. From May to December, Asian equity funds saw €20.4bn of net
The BRICS are dead! Long live the TICKs. The BRICs acronym was designed by Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neil in 2001 to conceptualize the Brazil, Russia, India, China superpowers of the emerging world. South Africa then attached itself to the team, adding the S to the name a few years later. With the commodity boom
Before one can start the process of forecasting where we wish to focus our portfolio strategy for the year ahead, it’s always best to review where we have just come from first. Notwithstanding that a Christmas rally may still eventuate (yeah, right!), the year to date numbers do not make pretty reading. As of this
The International Monetary Fund(IMF) has issued a series of warnings for markets when US rates eventually rise, cautioning they could cause emerging market corporate defaults and a loss of liquidity. According to the Telegraph, the IMF highlighted corporate debt in emerging markets has grown from $4trn in 2004 to $18trn last year, accompanied by weaker
