Why I’d Steer Clear of Emerging Markets

Why I’d Steer Clear of Emerging Markets… For Now

by Phoenix Capital Research

While stocks continue to float on ether and pipedreams, the commodities, credit, and bond markets are all forecasting another round of deflation. Whether it arrives now or in the near future remains to be seen. But he fact remains that at some point we’re going to have another 2008 event. The most likely cause will be Europe, but with the Middle East heating up, and Bernanke’s loose money policies becoming more and more politically toxic in the US, who knows?

On that note, I expect emerging markets to underperform US indexes going forward. One chart I use to view how these two assets perform relative to one another is to price the Emerging Markets ETF (EEM) via the S&P 500. When this chart rallies, Emerging Markets outperform the S&P 500. When this chart falls, the S&P 500 outperforms Emerging Markets.


As you can see, since August, the S&P 500 has outperformed Emerging Markets with the exception of a few brief periods. I expect this trend to continue with US markets holding up better than their Emerging Market counterparts as we’ve recently broken major support.

Indeed, the long-term chart of EEM relative to the S&P 500 shows that the love affair with Emerging Markets may indeed be ending:



As you can see, we’ve broken below MAJOR support here and have since failed to reclaim this line (indicating that former support is now resistance). This is a VERY bearish chart which indicates that we are very likely entering a prolonged period in which Emerging Markets will underperform US indexes dramatically.

Prepare accordingly.

Nifty : Triple Zig - Zag ?

The recent Nifty moves must have fooled many traders : the intraday breakdown of 4700, but the inability to close below it on the daily chart pointed towards a possibility of a strong upward reaction. We got that as well, can't say how many traders would have caught that move.

Next thought that comes in mind is how much more this rally can carry on, or have we made a short/medium term bottom. I took a look at the kind of pattern that has developed since last year, which in Elliot terminology looks like the formation of a triple zig-zag.

In the above table, I have marked the waves as A, B, C and X. Zig-Zag type of correction generally tend to have a relationship among its counterpart waves. As we see the first 2 wave Bs are around 75% retracement of wave As, also wave Cs are roughly 150% extension of wave A. The lower table shows wave Xs being about 60% retracement of the entire 3 wave correction.

The bottom 2 rows of the upper table is where I have tried to use this relationship to estimate the target of the current upward wave and the target of the next final C wave down. So the target of current rally looks to be ending around 5200 (nice resistance!) and finally a break of all supports to reach somewhere around 4100 (this is currently a vague target, underlying thought being another 1000 point or more massive fall).

The reason I am still suspecting another fall is the fact that we are still awaiting a resolution of all these European s***. The fact that all central banks come together to provide liquidity means there was something very terrible about to happen. The current effort is just another kick on the can. I am expecting market to realize sooner than later the hopeless situation Europe is in and the solution lies in taking the pain rather than buying another dose of the same drug.

The rally is also very technical in nature due to the fact markets was oversold and seasonal factors suggests some kind of year end Santa Claus rally! I feel we are going to make another top in late december or early january and then have a terrible Q1 2012. Hopefully 4000 or roundabout Nifty should find its feet.