No cause for panic in emerging markets

Leverage in the emerging markets is now approaching an all-time high, according to fund managers and sell-side analysts. But the structure of investment patterns in this asset class means a crash is unlikely. Felix Salmon reports.

EMERGING MARKET BONDS, nearly all observers agree, have risen about as far as they can go. With spreads at these levels, the chances of significant capital appreciation are minimal; the best that investors can hope for is that there won’t be much widening for the rest of the year.

In such an environment, where analysts on both the buy side and the sell side foresee a total return for emerging-market debt in the region of zero, investors are inevitably going to look to other methods of beefing up their yields.

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