Dec 12, 2019 - World

Fund managers predict strong growth next year for emerging markets

Data: Investing.com; Chart: Axios Visuals
Data: Investing.com; Chart: Axios Visuals

After years of U.S. outperformance, fund managers say they expect American assets to deliver gains in line with international markets in 2020.

The big picture: Firms including BlackRock, BofA and JPMorgan say they are particularly bullish on emerging market equities, which have been unloved in 2019.

What to watch: They predict strong growth next year for EM countries, even as China's growth is widely expected to slow below 6%.

  • Big EM economies like Brazil, Russia, Mexico and South Africa are poised to see rebounds in growth after struggling in 2019.

Threat level: While his base case is that the growth decline has bottomed, a major risk to EM and global economic strength is India, BofA's senior global economist Aditya Bhave tells Axios. The country has seen its GDP fall from 7% in the second quarter of 2018 to 4.5% in Q2 this year.

  • "It's really concerning and risk is to the downside," Bhave says. "The slowdown is idiosyncratic and it's quite severe."

Go deeper:

Go deeper