Significant EM/commodities correlations – BBH

By FXStreet Analysts at Brown Brothers Harriman explained that looking at the commodity-related EM currencies, the correlations can be pretty significant.

Key Quotes:

“1) In the energy complex, Brent oil results in higher correlation coefficients than WTI oil and natural gas (the exception is COP). The most correlated currency here is RUB (-0.636), followed by COP (-0.562), MXN (-0.415), CLP (-0.376), ZAR (-0.367), BRL (-0.281), and MYR (-0.210). It’s interesting that two currencies that are not oil-related (CLP and ZAR) still have fairly high correlations, could be due to the idea that commodities as a whole can be highly correlated at times.

2) In the metals complex, platinum has fairly high correlations across these EM currencies. We substituted PEN for MYR in this study. The most correlated currency here is ZAR (-0.376), followed by CLP (-0.375), COP (-0.295), MXN (-0.288), BRL (-0.283), RUB (-0.231), and PEN (-0.210).

3) Copper too has fairly high correlations, but with different currencies than platinum. The most correlated currency here is CLP (-0.552), followed by COP (-0.395), PEN (-0.359), RUB (-0.274), MXN (-0.230), ZAR (-0.209), and BRL (-0.151).

4) Gold has the lowest correlations amongst the metals we used. The most correlated currency …read more

Source:: FX Street