By Rodrigo Campos
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Non-residents pulled $13.8 billion from their emerging market portfolios in September as the prospect of higher interest rates in the developed world for a longer period continues to weigh on EM assets globally, a report showed on Friday.
With August having also seen negative flows, it was the first back-to-back month of outflows since a string of five months that ended in July 2022, according to a monthly report from the Institute of International Finance.
Debt portfolios posted their first monthly outflow since March at -$1.8 billion, while equities, at -$12.0 billion, saw a deceleration in negative flows from the -$21.5 billion shed in August.
For equity portfolios excluding China, it was the largest monthly outflow since September 2022.
Similar to August, the selling pressure in EM portfolio stems from higher interest rates – and higher yielding assets – in developed markets, which typically affects allocation to the detriment of EMs.
“Recent market turmoil around the future path of monetary policy, along (with) the increasing sovereign yields have made a dent on the performance of non-resident outflows across Emerging Markets,” said IIF economist Jonathan Fortun.
“There is a prevailing notion that interest rates will remain elevated for an extended period. This has resulted in a weak performance of debt securities.”
The International Monetary Fund said earlier this week it expects output growth in advanced economies to slow from 2.6% in 2022 to 1.5% this year and 1.4% in 2024 due in part to effects of monetary policy tightening.
Emerging Asia led overall outflows last month with a negative $8.1 billion print, followed by the Africa and Middle East region with a $4.5 billion outflow. Emerging Europe saw a $0.8 billion outflow and Latin America just $0.3 billion.
On the equities side all geographical regions posted outflows while debt posted inflows in Latam and emerging Asia.
Year-to-date estimates through September show a net $59 billion outflow from China including over $75 billion in outflows from debt portfolios, while emerging markets ex-China have seen $178 billion in net non-resident portfolio inflows.
(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Jonathan Oatis)
