Emerging market bonds have had their best start to the year on record as new issuance has surged and interest rate premiums over US Treasuries have narrowed to their lowest since 2008.
Sovereign bond markets in developing countries have seen a record $129bn in new deals so far this year, a 42 per cent increase over the same period last year, the previous record for issuance, according to Dealogic.
Bond yields, which have been tightening since March last year, have narrowed further in the past two weeks as the success of Greece's new debt offering at the start of the month stabilised markets.
Emerging market yields narrowed to 2.57 percentage points over US Treasuries yesterday compared with 3.5 percentage points a month ago, according to JPMorgan's Embi+ index.
That is a sharp fall from the recent cyclical peak of 6.84 percentage points in March last year and a fraction of the all-time peak of 16.64 percentage points over US Treasuries in September 1998.
The index, which tracks the 16 biggest emerging bond markets, was launched at the end of 1997 after the Asian financial crisis.
Bryan Pascoe, global head of debt syndication at HSBC, said that optimism surrounding Greece had boosted emerging market bonds, allowing governments to lock in low borrowing rates.
However, other bankers warn that a sell-off may be imminent as interest rate spreads over benchmark bonds have tightened too far, particularly in markets such as Indonesia and Brazil, which have been among the best performers.
Nigel Rendell, senior emerging markets strategist at RBC Capital Markets, said: “It is a good time for investors to take some profits and wait for a better time to buy as the market is almost certain to fall in the next few months.”