Top picks for Q4 2021: Angola, Ecuador, Rwanda, Egypt & Zambia
Exclusively for attendees of this year's Fixed Income Leaders Summit, we present an excerpt from our top FI picks for the rest of this year – an update to our top picks for 2021, published in December. Our revised Top 5 comprises Buys on hard currency bonds in Angola, Ecuador and Rwanda, and local debt in Egypt and Zambia. Three of these are new additions (Ecuador, Rwanda, Zambia), while two picks (Angola and Egypt) are unchanged from our top picks for the year. We have removed Ethiopia, Mozambique and Sri Lanka.
The year so far
EM hard currency sovereign bonds as a whole have struggled this year, with a total return on the EMBIGD of 0.9% YTD (by the end of last week), while the EMBI spread has fallen by just 8bps this year to 344bps, although it is only 14bps wide of its stimulus-fuelled post-pandemic low (330bps), which was seen in June. Yet the EMBI spread is still some 50bps off the levels we saw immediately pre-pandemic (290bps in January 2020) and well above its all-time lows (238bps in April 2010 and January 2013), suggesting there is room for some further spread compression.
However, the overall weakness masks some strong performance from idiosyncratic cases. The best performers, with returns well into double-digits, have been Zambia, Ecuador, Sri Lanka and Angola, which partly reflects catch up given how much they sold off last year, while Zambia’s rally also reflects hopes for a market-friendly outcome after the recent election.
At the other end of the scale, the worst performers have been Ethiopia (default concerns under the Common Framework), El Salvador (financing concerns amid the lack of an IMF programme), Colombia (fiscal risks) and Peru (policy outlook after the election), again reflective of some country-specific issues.
To read our top 5 Fixed Income picks in full, go here: https://tellimer.com/article/fixed-income-strategy-top-picks-for-q4-2021
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Featuring: Tellimer’s Stuart Culverhouse and 7-Chord CEO Kristina Fan
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