A tough start to the year for frontier financial markets

Frontier assets have had a difficult start to the year as fears over global growth caused fresh turmoil in financial markets. Oil producers have been particularly hard hit on the back of the collapse in oil prices, which touched a 13-year low earlier this month. Equity markets in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Nigeria all suffered double-digit falls over the past month. In the currency market, the Kazakh tenge has extended its losses becoming among the worst-performing currencies in the world this month. Meanwhile, speculation has continued to mount that Saudi Arabia will be forced to devalue the riyal. But we continue to think that this will only be used as a last resort.