Energy price implications for emerging market bond returns

This paper examines the impact of oil price innovations on emerging market sovereign total bond returns, as measured by the JP Morgan Emerging Market total return bond index, for portfolios of oil exporting and oil importing countries from 2007 to 2015. Globally emerging markets have benefited from investors’ desire for global diversification and search for higher yield returns. This recent wave of investor demand has provided benefits to both investment grade and noninvestment grade countries and has reduced reliance on International Finance Institutional sources. Bond market investors have shifted to shorter investment horizons, and an oil price shock may influence a country’s ability to access international markets for funding during adverse market conditions. Thus, oil price interaction with bond returns and the investor perception of oil price innovations on sovereign credit risk have the capacity to have profound impacts on national economies. This paper finds that oil prices have a statistically significant influence on portfolio total sovereign bond returns for globally focused oil exporters and importers. Exporter and importer total bond portfolio return responses to positive oil price shock conditions were similar, implying that sovereign governments’ bond portfolios are exposed to changes in investor risk perception, but not necessarily in terms of their oil importing and exporting status.