Warnings of doom
Analysts have been warning of doom waiting to strike the emerging markets, with the US bond market heralding a new downturn in global industrial growth.
Deutsche Bank research has singled out countries like Russia, saying those with large state sectors could prove especially volatile.
Richard Bernstein, who runs an investment advisory business of the same name, warned in a note last month that yield curves in the BRIC countries will soon invert, overtightened short-term interest rates bringing the bull market to a close.
The BRIC central banks do seem to have succeeded in tethering inflation.
According to HSBC's Emerging Markets Index for the April to June period, inflation peaked in the first quarter.
Growth, however, has taken a hit. All the major emerging markets except India saw a contraction in new export orders in the second quarter.
As for rates of production growth, even India slowed, while in Russia activity touched a five-quarter low.
The output of the Russian economy is still below the levels of the precrisis years, and below the peak of the recovery in the first half of 2010.
Stephen King, HSBC's chief economist, said in the report: "In many parts of the emerging world, there has been a noticeable reduction in the growth of export orders, consistent with the recent experience of countries in the developed world, suggesting world trade growth peaked in the first quarter of the year."
The good news is that emerging markets are increasingly investing in each other. Asian investors, for example, are financing Latin American infrastructure projects.
"As this new infrastructure comes on stream, so a new network of economic connections across the emerging world will be established, along what HSBC has termed The Southern Silk Road," King said.
The service sector remains a bright spot for Russia, closely trailing India with the fastest-growing emerging markets service sector.
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