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Sharp, Long-lasting Slowdown to Hit Developing Countries Hard
January 10, 2023--2023 global growth to slow to 1.7% from 3% expected six months ago
Global growth is slowing sharply in the face of elevated inflation, higher interest rates, reduced investment, and disruptions caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, according to the World Bank's latest Global Economic Prospects report.
Given fragile economic conditions, any new adverse development-such as higher-than-expected inflation, abrupt rises in interest rates to contain it, a resurgence of the COVID-19 pandemic, or escalating geopolitical tensions-could push the global economy into recession.
This would mark the first time in more than 80 years that two global recessions have occurred within the same decade.
The global economy is projected to grow by 1.7% in 2023 and 2.7% in 2024. The sharp downturn in growth is expected to be widespread, with forecasts in 2023 revised down for 95% of advanced economies and nearly 70% of emerging market and developing economies.
Dozens of companies ejected from FTSE4Good indices
January 10, 2023--Failure to satisfy index provider on new climate rules excludes 34 groups from widely tracked benchmarks
FTSE Russell has ejected dozens of companies from a family of stock indices for failing to meet more stringent environmental standards, the first time it has taken such a step.
The index provider has removed 34 groups from its FTSE4Good All-World benchmark after deciding they failed to meet its newly introduced Climate Change Score.
ETF industry storms through 2022's headwinds
January 9, 2023--Government bond vehicles chalk up record inflows helping overall total reach $867bn -the second-highest on record
Last year may have been one of the worst years ever for global markets, but sections of the exchange traded fund industry stormed to new records in a generally strong year that underlined the vehicles' accelerating growth.
ETFs attracted net inflows of $867bn globally during the year, the second-highest on record after 2021's $1.29tn peak, according to data from BlackRock, despite the market crash.
World Bank-2022 in Nine Charts
January 6, 2023--Slowing Growth
The confluence of crises that defined 2022 continue to hamper global growth. The global economy is now in its steepest slowdown following a post-recession recovery since 1970-with global consumer confidence already suffering a much sharper decline than during the run-up to previous global recessions.
The world's three largest economies-the United States, China, and the euro area-have been sharply slowing. Under the circumstances, even a moderate hit to the global economy over the next year could tip it into recession.
IMF Working Paper-Why Some Don't Belong-The Distributional Effects of Natural Disasters These are trends shaping the future of food The future of food and agriculture: Drivers and triggers for transformation, released in December 2022, warns that without broader changes on a socioeconomic and environmental level, we will not be able to build and maintain sustainable agrifood systems.
"Many of the SDGs (UN Sustainable Development Goals) are not on track and will only be achieved if agrifood systems are transformed properly to withstand ongoing global adversity that undermines food security and nutrition due to growing structural inequalities and also regional inequalities," FAO Director-General QU Dongyu said at a launch event. Clutch of emerging markets bucks trend with huge ETF outperformance How Do Rising U.S. Interest Rates Affect Emerging and Developing Economies ? It Depends The hidden costs of investing in US equity ETFs
In the fast-evolving investment fund industry, this can often be the case. First, exchange traded funds usually offer much lower fees than their mutual fund counterparts, and this partly explains why they continue to grab market share.
WTO-Services trade activity likely to weaken with slowing growth in major economies
January 6, 2022--Summary:
When and how do natural disasters worsen within-country income inequality? We highlight the channels through which natural disasters may have distributional effects and empirically analyze when and which type of disasters affect inequality in advanced economies (AEs) and in emerging and developing economies (EMDEs).
We find that in AEs inequality increases after severe disasters. We also find that inequality increases if severe disasters are associated with growth slowdowns or there are multiple disasters in a year in AEs and in EMDEs. Descriptive evidence for the US also suggests that adverse labor market effects of disasters are likely to fall on vulnerable groups.
January 3, 2023--An FAO report warns of the risks and challenges facing global agrifood systems.
It calls for urgent action to address these issues.
The World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting in Davos will explore food security as one of a series of interconnected global problems.
Our ability to feed a growing global population is under threat, according to a new report from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
December 28, 2022--Chile, India, Mexico and South Korea record year-on-year growth even as global assets fell
Financial markets may have slumped across most of the world in 2022, but a handful of countries are on track to see growth in exchange traded fund assets despite the headwind of plummeting valuations.
The resilience attests to the growing adoption of ETFs around the globe-particularly in some emerging market economies where uptake has lagged behind more developed countries-as well as some pockets of resistance in financial markets themselves.
December 21, 2022--This paper examines the implications of different types of interest rate shocks in the United States for emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs). It first classifies changes in U.S. interest rates into those caused by changes in inflation expectations ("inflation" shocks), changes in perceptions of the Federal Reserve's reaction function ("reaction" shocks), and changes in real activity ("real" shocks).
The analysis attributes this year's sharp increases in U.S. interest rates almost exclusively to inflation and reaction shocks. These types of shocks are found to be associated with especially adverse effects: EMDE financial conditions tighten, consumption and investment fall, and governments cut spending to improve budget balances. By comparison, rising U.S. interest rates stemming from real shocks are not only associated with benign outcomes for EMDE financial conditions but also improvements in budget balances that reflect higher revenues as well as lower expenditures. Finally, this paper documents that rising U.S. interest rates driven by reaction shocks are especially likely to push EMDEs into financial crisis.
December 22, 2022--Experts point out that it is not all about the fees. There are also currency, trading costs, spreads and tax considerations
Checking your investments too often can be a good way to end up out of pocket.
This wisdom, gained from behavioural finance experiments showing that too much information leads to "myopic loss aversion", could lead investors to believe they should just "set it and forget it". However, experts insist you should know what you own, and even if you want to retain the same exposure, you should check to see if there is now a cheaper way of doing so.
December 22, 2022--World services trade activity appears to have weakened in the fourth quarter of 2022 and is likely to remain soft in the opening months of 2023, with slowing growth in major economies weighing on the post-pandemic recovery, according to the latest WTO Services Trade Barometer released on 22 December.
The Barometer index reading for the month of October fell to 98.3, slightly below its baseline value of 100 and well below the previous reading of 105.5 from the last release in June. The findings are line with the Goods Trade Barometer issued in late November which indicated slowing merchandise trade volume growth in the closing months of 2022 and into 2023