2025 was a strong year for emerging market investors. Faced with geopolitical turbulence and a challenging macroeconomic environment, emerging market debt (EMD) has proved resilient.
Emerging market corporate debt is a largely misunderstood asset class as general perceptions have not kept up with reality. Our Emerging Markets Fixed Income team looks at how the asset class has evolved over recent years and dispels some of the key myths surrounding it.
Emerging-market (EM) corporates have a track record of resilience across market cycles. For over a decade, EM corporate bonds have allowed for participation in rising markets, while exposing investors to less downside during market downdrafts. This is due to an especially pronounced inherent barbell structure that balances interest-rate risk with credit risk, providing independent sources of return that are negatively correlated to each other.