Emerging Market Investors Buy Up Bond ETFs

The iShares JP Morgan EM Local Government Bond UCITS ETF had net deposits of $341 million last week, the most since Feb. 8, as the Federal Reserve’s dovish stance and progress in U.S.-China trade talks spur demand from some of the world’s biggest money managers. Meanwhile, investors pulled $251 million from the largest ETF for emerging-market dollar bonds, bringing outflows for April to $1.6 billion, the most in more than a year.

“The dollar does not need to be super weak for emerging market local-currency bonds to be a good investment,” said Eric Stein, Boston-based co-director of global income at Eaton Vance Corp., which manages $460 billion of assets. “Even in an environment of moderate dollar strength, local bonds can generate good returns and we are positioned for that with them seen to outperform dollar bonds.”

JPMorgan Chase & Co. said last week that its clients increased their exposure to emerging currencies to the highest level since May 2018. They were overweight the South African rand, Russian ruble, Brazilian real, Nigerian naira and the Egyptian pound.

“Some local-bond curves are steep, so they’re fairly attractive,” said Magdalena Polan, a strategist at Legal & General Investment Management in London. “Central banks are dropping hawkish guidance or even moving toward easing, so that’s good for bonds and would be a good opportunity in those EMs that can ease.”

Local bonds have some catching up to do. They’ve returned investors 1.8 percent this year in dollar terms, which compares with 5.9 percent for emerging-market dollar bonds and 11.9 percent for equities.

With local rates, “we can still witness a substantial positive gap between emerging-market and developed-market real yields,” said Carl Ross and Victoria Courmes, Boston-based analysts at Grantham Mayo Van Otterloo & Co. “Valuation metrics for emerging external debt are less compelling than they were at the beginning of the year, due to the rally.”