Emerging-market stocks may not have reached their lows because inflation has yet to slow in the so- called BRIC nations of Brazil, Russia, India and China, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co.
“We are probably very close to the lows of the year; the reason I don’t emphatically say this is the buying moment is we still have an inflation problem in the big emerging markets,” Adrian Mowat, the chief Asia and emerging-market strategist at JPMorgan, said in a Bloomberg Television interview in Hong Kong.
The MSCI Emerging Markets Index has slumped 11 percent this year, compared with a 5.9 percent drop in the MSCI World Index of developed nations, as countries from India to Brazil raised borrowing costs to curb rising consumer prices. The MSCI BRIC Index has fallen 13 percent in 2011.
India’s government is due to report its wholesale price index today, which economists in a Bloomberg survey estimate will show growth of 9.2 percent in July, the eighth month of inflation above 9 percent. The central bank has increased interest rates 11 times since the start of last year.
Brazil’s central bank has raised its target rate five times this year. Consumer-price increases have stayed above the bank’s target range of 2.5 percent to 6.5 percent since April as rising wages and credit growth stoked consumption.
“Equity markets are going to hit their lows when growth has slowed down, inflation is coming off and analysts are very aggressively downgrading earnings,” Mowat said.
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