Emerging Markets Outperform

Maria Draghi and the ECB took the plunge and commit to buy assets.

Trillions!


This will continue the "money printing" and will tend to further depress the value of a Euro. The U.S. dollar will continue to gain strength for the time being. The Yen is another question, and it may tend to weigh on the USD as time goes on. The currency war continues.

Energy will, by most accounts, remain weak and cheap for some time. The war between Saudi "overproduction" and the shale revolution in the U.S. and Canada, fueled by cheap money will continue. This is good for consumers and users of oil the world over.

Combine continued easy money with continued cheap energy and it seems to me that you have a potentially explosive mixture. Demand for energy will rise, energy conservation will ease, and activity will increase worldwide. I believe this will be the catalyst for an increase in the velocity of money. The velocity of money has been the factor that has limited the effectiveness of the central bank policies for many years. The velocity of money is the willingness of the horses to pull against the harness. (To reuse a previous analogy)
As the US dollar stays relatively strong, consumption will increase in the US, combined with the cheap energy optimism.
Emerging markets will see increased demand for their exports. These conclusions have been reinforced  in the action in the markets lately. See the charts. I think that emerging markets will outperform for the next couple of years. This will be the timeframe for inflation to start to take hold worldwide.  After that, all bets are off. But, in the long term......

The charts illustrate the recent relative strength in EEM.

It is important to remember that in the early stages of inflation all assets have the potential to go wildly higher. This includes stocks. We saw this in 2003-2007.

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