Emerging Markets

By Michael Pettis For the past two years, as regular readers know, I have been bearish on hard commodities. Prices may have dropped substantially from their peaks during this time, but I don’t think the bear market is over. I think we…

By Sober Look China's Ministry of Commerce blamed the increase in vegetable prices on "strong winds and rainfall in the country's eastern regions" that "disrupted production and logistics." Nevertheless vegetable prices are up 15.4% over…

We are staring into a cyclical downturn in the second half of this year. Behind that is a whole other set of challenges, more structural in nature, which will take years to sort out. Our American friends - except for a small but rather…

The latest data out of China will give those expecting a soft landing pause about China's economic situation. While inflation has come down somewhat of late, so too have industrial output and capital investment. This is creating EM feedback…

There has been a lot of chatter about Apple recently because of the monster move it has sustained in the first four months of the year. Bloomberg reports that Apple gained more than $250 billion in market share in just four months to April…

This is a gold level post. I want to flag this as an issue since no one seems to be talking about it. Brazil's economy has slowed very sharply of late and along with slowdowns in India and China, it says that the global economy will get…

The year got off on a much better foot than might have been expected, at least as far as global manufacturing is concerned. So the fall in global manufacturing has flattened out, even though the bounce back has more of a dead cat look about…

Two weeks ago I highlighted the fact that Indonesia has re-attained an investment grade rating, continuing the upward path it has been on since the Asian crisis derailed the Asian growth story 15 years ago. Indeed, we should expect emerging…

Just as Europe and the US are suffering massive downgrades, other countries are seeing their risk profiles improve. Indonesia is a perfect example.

We think markets are getting too bulled up on the IMF headlines today. As the saying goes, “Show me the money!” Until then, we remain skeptical that the IMF will be able to obtain the extra funding it desires. Even if the IMF does get the…