The current will-they-won’t-they game is over at last: the US Federal Reserve will raise interest rates on Wednesday. So say investors, who have fully priced in a quarter-point rise. But for emerging markets, particularly in Asia, such a move will only prompt another question, namely which matters more for 2017 — the Fed, or China?
Emerging Asia just suffered its worst month of outflows since the “taper tantrum” of 2013. A net $22bn fled the region’s stock and bond markets in November, according to ANZ in a “Trump tantrum”. Departing investors expect that the president-elect’s infrastructure spending plans and tax cut plans would boost inflation and push up interest rates further. Until the latest move, links between US interest rates and local markets had appeared to weaken, leaving Asia to trade on its relative merits. As a result, this apparent re-coupling has come as a sharp shock.
The Fed risk is based on assumptions that the US will curb resurgent inflation with an unexpectedly speedy series of rate rises — hitting Asian borrowers hard. Sharp rises in US yields — 10-year Treasuries hit two-year highs on Monday — have already lifted Asian equivalents. Higher rates in the US would also limit the attraction of EM assets, whose currencies tend to gain only slightly from net inflows, according to research by Société Générale, but weaken sharply when the money moves out.