Economics

Until just a week ago, Turkey (against all the odds) seemed to be doing well again, said Reza Karim, assistant fund manager, Fixed Income. Inflation had come down from 25% last year to 9%. The central bank had managed to cut rates by 750bps, which restarted the debt-fuelled growth engine...

GAM Investments’ Tim Love reflects on the performance of his frontier market plays, Vietnam, Argentina, Romania, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia (VARPS) so far this year and discusses the investment opportunities and risks associated with these economies.

Despite it being more than 10 years since the global financial crisis (GFC), the world remains heavily indebted and there is no realistic prospect of that debt reducing in the short or medium term. Barring glaring historical exceptions, sovereign debt levels in many economies are close to all-time highs...

It appears that a German fiscal stimulus is not imminent and that these effects would take time to materialize. Maintaining a budget surplus target while the Eurosystem will start buying German bonds again from November will maintain downward pressure on German long-term interest rates.

The duration rally over the month of August was eye-watering. The whole German sovereign bond curve, out to 30 years, now trades with a negative yield, with half the European investment grade bond universe also yielding below zero.