Emerging Markets

Wedged between an improving labor market but icy global conditions, the Fed may be on the verge of conducting a policy mistake. This would be dollar and yen bullish. Commodity and EM currencies should bear the brunt of any pain. The pound's upside is limited, but so is the downside. NZD should soon buckle. Draghi did nothing, yet the euro rebounded little.

Forget about the production-cooperation pact agreed between Russia and KSA over the weekend at the G20 meeting in China. With or without it, rebalancing of the oil market will force global inventories to draw beginning in 2016Q4 and continue into next year, setting the stage for a gradual rise in prices - slightly above our central tendency for WTI of $50/bbl - to encourage more rigs to return to the U.S. shales.

Hong Kong's growing political awareness and rising sensitivity to public policy underscores brewing social tensions brought about by decades of <i>Laissez-Faire</i> capitalism. Social policies will likely become progressively more redistributive, with potentially a longer-term negative impact on asset prices.

Conditions are falling into place for inflation to plunge and monetary easing to progress rapidly. This in combination with structural reforms creates a bullish backdrop for Argentine financial markets. The current economic, structural and political configurations look more promising for Argentina than Brazil. Go long Argentina/ short Brazilian sovereign credit, overweight the Argentine bourse versus the Frontier Markets benchmark and, go long the Argentine Peso versus the Brazilian <i>real</i>.

If the Fed convinces markets it is on track to lift rates this year and a couple of times next year, we expect a 10% appreciation of the USD over the next 12 months. This would be extremely bearish for commodities.

The downside risks to the RMB are mainly an overshoot of the dollar as the Fed raises rates. The PBoC will allow the RMB to fall against the dollar if the dollar strengthens broadly, but a freefall is not in the cards. The RMB is unlikely to fall more than 5% against the dollar in the next 12 months, unless the latter appreciates by over 10% in trade-weighted terms.

In China and the majority EMs, credit impulses will be negative over the next 12 months as and if their credit growth converges towards their current nominal GDP growth. These negative credit impulses will dampen EM/China growth and their corporate profits. In the next 12 months, the credit cycle is most vulnerable in China, Brazil, Turkey, and Malaysia and least vulnerable in central Europe, the Philippines, and Mexico.

Steel share prices celebrated the introduction of punitive import tariffs earlier this year, but that impact may already be wearing off. The latest data show that U.S. steel imports, while still well below the 2015 peak, have hooked back up, and are rising as a share of domestic production. China's steel prices have plunged, and are well below U.S. prices, a trend that may continue given that Chinese steel production has reaccelerated. Consequently, Chinese steel exports are likely to rise anew, especially given that floor space started is moving laterally and infrastructure spending growth is cooling rapidly (shown inverted, second panel). Less domestic consumption implies increased pressure to export. While U.S. producers may stay somewhat insulated given trade barriers, it will be difficult for U.S. steel prices to rise if prices in the rest of the world are deflating. Balance sheets remain stretched, as measured by historically high net debt/EBITDA ratios, underscoring that risk premiums will increase if low steel prices pressure cash flow. Stay underweight. The ticker symbols for the stocks in this index are: BLBG: S15STEL-NUE, STLD, RS, X, WOR, ATI, CMC, CRS, AKS, HAYN, SXC, TMST, ZEUS. (Part II) Steel Stocks Are Likely To Buckle (Part II) Steel Stocks Are Likely To Buckle