Attractive economic backdrop
Growth becoming harder to achieve
Emerging market bonds generated decent performance in the first half of 2017, rallying well after weakening towards the end of last year on the US election result.
With many asset classes having been pumped up to high valuations by central bank stimulus, we are concerned that investors are no longer receiving particularly generous rewards for taking market risk.
Valuations attractive
Japan (Topix) is doing well this year in US dollar terms, up 12% compared to 11% for the S&P 500 and 13% for the MSCI World index.