Emerging market opportunities

Wouter Van Overfelt, Head of Emerging Market Corporates and Luc D’hooge, Head of Emerging Markets Bonds, provide a review on the developments in the first quarter, the current positioning of the strategies as well as an outlook for the remainder of 2023.

Inflation may be like gum on your shoe – annoying and, above all, hard to remove. Sticky inflation is a scenario that has been in the cards for quite a while already but now seems to receive more weight as a probable outcome. There are six reasons for this display of stubbornness which may disappoint those who thought inflation would come off easily.

Luc D’hooge, Head of Emerging Markets Bonds and Wouter Van Overfelt, Head of Emerging Market Corporates, provide a review on the developments in 2022, the current positioning of the strategies as well as an outlook for 2023.

The euphoria in the financial markets has been driven by falling expectations of a severe recession. Although our models continue to indicate a US recession, this is likely to begin later in the year. This means there is no contradiction in the equity overweighting that is currently suggested by our model.

Should we blindly follow a machine? Or is human judgment needed to make weighed decisions? We believe that man and machine must act as a team to achieve the best results. That's why we developed the Wave, which is based on a big data approach and serves as a compass in our investment process.

The yield curve and our models point to a high probability of recession. But how severe will the U.S. recession be? To answer this question, we exploit historical data to examine the impact of the tightening cycle on GDP growth. The results show that investors should exercise caution in 2023.