Fall In Crude’s Impact On Emerging Markets: Israel May Benefit

Even with predictions of crude oil hitting $200-300 per barrel, the current drop in crude has it moving very quickly down to the $100 level. While investors have been focused on how the drop in oil will impact oil related stocks, I think they need to take a bit more of a Macro view and look at the impact on emerging market investing. The first country that comes to mind is Brazil. Brazil has been one of the world’s best performing markets so far this year, but a drop in crude prices may severely impact their market going forward as so much market weighting is given to companies in the oil industry. To a lesser extant this applies to Latin America as a whole.

With crude prices dropping it wouldn’t be too surprising for other commodity prices to follow suit. So much emerging market economic growth has centered around the huge run up in commodity prices, as many of these countries are blessed with rich supplies of raw materials. Russia and other natural resource based economies like Australia, and even Canada could be in for a rude awakening if we get a continued drop off in commodity prices.

So which emerging markets will benefit? I think Israel is one. Blessed with little in the way of natural resources, but with an abundance of creative and entrepreneurial people, Israel will continue to produce cutting edge innovation that powers the technological revolution that we are in the midst of. I wouldn’t be surprised to see rotation in emerging market investments with natural resource based economies being under-weighted and countries that produce value added goods, be over-weighted.

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