One emerging-market worry gives way to another

DESPITE THEIR supposed dynamism, emerging markets often struggle to escape their past. A few months ago, investors worried that this year would turn out to be a repeat of 2013, when rising bond yields in America prompted a sharp sell-off in emerging markets, known as the taper tantrum. Now investors are worried that 2021 will be a grim repeat of last year, as another, more virulent wave of covid-19 infections spreads through Brazil, India and elsewhere.To give shape to these fears, analysts have been busy drawing up lists of the most vulnerable countries, based on everything from inflation to infection rates. They have been looking for this year’s successors to the “fragile five” (Brazil, India, Indonesia, South Africa and Turkey), the countries that were hardest hit by the taper tantrum eight years ago. So it is notable that the man who named the original five, James Lord of Morgan Stanley, a bank, has chosen this moment to turn “outright bullish” on some emerging-market assets, telling his clients to “buy local bonds”. What explains his calm in the face of calamity?