Manufacturing

It might be a new year, but the concerns are anything but new. The growth fears that weighed on sentiment across the second half of 2018 and most notable in December wasted no time is rearing their head once again in 2019.

After 1) a first presidential debate in which Hillary Clinton was seen to have secured a major win over Donald Trump, 2) a vice-presidential debate where the Republican ticket gained back some ground with its supporters, 3) a scandalous revelation regarding a lewd tape of Trump’s self-professed “locker room talk” years ago, 4) a second presidential debate with mixed results for both Clinton and Trump, 5) a withdrawal of support for Trump by some prominent Republicans like House Speaker Paul Ryan, and 6) a release of additional hacked Clinton emails that could further damage the Democratic ticket, Clinton appears by most accounts to be leading the race with an increasingly wider margin.

As we noted earlier this morning, it’s shaping up as a classic “risk-off” day as global stocks, oil and high-yielding bonds continue to sell off in the US afternoon session. Naturally, that also means that emerging market currencies are having a rough go of it as well, with widely-followed EM currencies like the Turkish lira, South African rand, and Mexican peso all losing ground against the dollar. While the greenback fell relatively sharply across the board last week, the long-term trend for most EM currencies remains to the downside, prompting us to ask: “Can emerging markets capitalize on thie falling currencies?”