The ebb and flow of asset values this year has been larger than on previous occasions, but it is very unlikely that we are at a long-term inflection point for emerging markets.
Against a background of sentiment-motored noise, one can pick up the steadily louder hum of increasing EM leverage, the bulk of it in the corporate sector. Yet EM corporate credit has held up better than US high yield. The fact that energy figures more prominently in EM corporate benchmarks makes this outperformance more intriguing.
Some argue that the relative resilience is explained simply by the fact that most EM corporate credit is investment grade. However, ratings are not the assuring anchor they once were; our credit RiskMetrics suggest that EM ratings have only begun a process of being cut several notches.