We have argued for some time that emerging market (EM) hard-currency bonds, particularly those issued by sovereigns, have been one of the best performing fixed income asset classes globally over the last 15 years. In past work we showed that the asset class has exhibited an information ratio (annualised returns divided by annualised volatility) of close to one over this time horizon, outperforming many comparable developed market fixed income segments in terms of both total and risk- adjusted returns.

A fascinating recent paper by The National Bureau of Economic Research titled Sovereign Bonds since Waterloo by Josefin Meyer, Carmen M. Reinhart, and Christoph Trebesch, has taken the historical analysis of the asset classs performance a whopping 185 years further back. The authors built a time series of monthly prices for 1,400 emerging market foreign-currency bonds since the battle of Waterloo in 1815, spanning 91 countriesa database of more than 200,000 observations.

The authors conclude that notwithstanding defaults, wars, and global crises, the average real yearly return on a global portfolio of hard-currency emerging market sovereign bonds was 6.8 per cent over the entire sample, about four per cent higher than that of risk-free benchmark government bonds of the UK or the US. The lions share of those returns is explained by coupon payments (70 per cent) rather than by price changes (30 per cent). Such diversified exposure to hard currency emerging market sovereign bonds has shown favourable risk-return properties compared to other assets during in the last 200 years. Only US equities show a higher average return, but these also have a higher standard deviation.

In our recent report, Thinking Strategically About Emerging Markets, we demonstrated thatin addition to possessing desirable stand-alone risk-return properties US dollar-denominated bonds in emerging markets have historically added great diversification benefits to global portfolios, leading to improved risk-adjusted returns of the overall portfolio.

We have also argued that defaults of EM sovereigns have been a common occurrence in the past and will almost certainly continue to occur in the future, but that its important to separate the individual stories from the asset class as a whole. Interestingly, The National Bureau of Economic Researchs paper also conducts a census of all distressed sovereign debt restructurings since 1815. Their sample includes a total of 313 external sovereign debt restructurings in the last 200 years. As painful as many of these credit events have been, the authors argue that investors have been compensated for the risks involved.

Looking at the behaviour of a group of 60 serial defaulters, they conclude bonds from these issuers provided on aggregate significantly higher returns compared to UK or US government bonds as well as in comparison to emerging market countries that have never defaulted, in addition of course to a higher standard deviation of returns.

All in all, we conclude that 200 years of EM bond history support the thesis that emerging market US dollar- denominated bonds can play an important role in a globally diversified portfolio.

DEFAULTS OF EM SOVEREIGNS HAVE BEEN A COMMON OCCURRENCE IN THE PAST AND WILL ALMOST CERTAINLY CONTINUE TO OCCUR IN THE FUTURE, BUT THAT ITS IMPORTANT TO SEPARATE THE INDIVIDUAL STORIES FROM THE ASSET CLASS AS A WHOLE.

Alejo Czerwonko, Emerging Markets Strategist, UBS Global Wealth Management

2019 CPI Financial. All rights reserved. Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. (Syndigate.info).

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