The European economic contagion is threatening to become a worldwide flu as the financial turmoil spreads to the once high-flying emerging market economies. Stock indices from South Korea to Russia to Brazil plummeted on Thursday and continued their sell off on Friday amid fears that a global recession may be underway. The "risk off" trade has now enveloped nearly every asset class at this point, leaving just the U.S. dollar as the world's sole safe haven investment.
But the economic fundamentals may be on the side of the emerging markets, setting them up for a major relief rally once the panic has abated. Swift action is needed by the governments of these countries to make sure that their economies can survive this market rout and re-emerge as strong investment alternatives for Wall Street.
The emerging markets have been the darlings of Wall Street for the last two years as investors sought yield amid anemic growth rates in the U.S. Commodity-driven economies like Brazil and Russia as well as export-driven economies like China and South Korea have delivered double-digit percentage returns to equity and currency investors, outperforming established economies. Investment dollars flowed freely out of U.S. and European stock markets and pumped up those in Asia and Latin America, while currency traders took out short dollar positions, raising the value of emerging market currencies versus the greenback, especially in Brazil and Australia. So far this year, inflows into emerging market fixed income funds alone were $36 billion, according to JP Morgan (JPM).
But that may all be coming to an end. It was the emerging markets that took the brunt of the burn of the last few trading sessions, with the MSCI Emerging Markets Index losing 11% on the week, its biggest loss since 2008. Stocks in Korea closed overnight down 5.73% to 1,697, that market's lowest close in 15 months. It was the same story in the Philippines, which closed down 5.13%. And the Asian benchmark Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong closed the week down 9%, its worst weekly loss since October 2008. To make matters worse, most emerging market currencies have reversed their gains for the whole year against the U.S. dollar in just the last week.
Total emerging market equity funds have seen $1.4 billion in redemptions for the week ended September 21st, the latest data available from exchanges. There are no signs of the sell-off abating, with $183 million of outflows seen just in Korea on Friday.
The vast majority of this selling occurred following the Fed's announcement of its new "Operation Twist" plan Wednesday afternoon. The markets felt that the Fed action, which hopes to lower long-term interest rates, would not be as effective as another round of quantitative easing. Inflation fears caused investors to start pulling out of the emerging markets Thursday morning, which exacerbated the sell-offs around the globe.
