Emerging market equities around the world tumbled on Monday, as fears of a recession in the United States sparked a global selloff and sent investors running for safer assets like the Japanese yen. MSCI's index of global emerging market stocks (.MSCIEF), opens new tab lost 4.1%, as a free fall in Japanese stocks spilled over across Asia, while worries about technology sector earnings weighed on bourses in Taiwan (.TWII), opens new tab and South Korea (.KS11), opens new tab.
The risk-off mood continued from Friday, when a weaker-than-expected U.S. jobs data triggered worries of recession in the world's largest economy. This compounded concerns for emerging markets over worries in China, a spate of poor tech sector earnings, and geopolitical tensions in the Middle East. Traders are now pricing in a 50 basis points interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve's September meeting, compared to a more typical 25 bps cut expected last week.
"The overnight moves in Asia caused some panic selling, and in August we're in really thin liquidity, nobody really knows which pebble caused the avalanche," said Patrick Reid, co-founder of FX consultancy The Adamis Principle.
South Korean stocks notched their worst session since the global financial crisis of 2008, triggering circuit breakers for the first time since March 2020. The selloff continued on emerging market bourses in Europe and the Middle East. That was its worst one-day decline since 1987.
Trading on Turkey's BIST-100 index (.XU100), opens new tab was halted twice on Monday after heavy premarket losses. The index was last down 3.8% with an index of bank stocks (.XBANK), opens new tab slipping 4.2% as the lira dropped to record low against the dollar. Meanwhile, the yen leapt to a seven-month high against the dollar while crowded carry trades unwound, pressuring high-yielding emerging market currencies. A rebound in the yen, the most favored funding currency for carry trades, weighed on the U.S. dollar and lifted emerging market funding currencies like China's yuan .
"You had it really good while it lasted, but now we're getting clusters of risk-off unwinds in carry (trades), I see that to continue at least into Q4," Reid said.
Malaysia's ringgit also continued its strong run, touching its highest to the dollar since April 2023. A 0.5% loss in the dollar helped lift MSCI's emerging market currency index (.MIEM00000CUS), opens new tab 0.3%, with European emerging market currencies , also regaining ground against the greenback.
On the other hand, high-yielding EM currencies lost ground, with the Indian rupee becoming the worst-performing Asian currency this year, while the Mexican peso touched its lowest since October 2022. On the data front, Turkish annual inflation fell to 61.78% in July, just below expectations, while Czech retail sales rose 4.4%.
