Thoughts on managing currency risk in EM equity plays when your base currency is strong?
Hey everyone, been lurking for a while and trying to get my head around a few things as I slowly dip my toes deeper into EM. I'm primarily looking at long-term equity plays in places like Vietnam and India, but my base currency is USD. It feels like every time I find a solid local company, the potential gains are somewhat muted, or even outright challenged, by the $USD strength. I understand hedging is an option, but for smaller positions or longer holding periods, the costs seem to eat into the thesis pretty quickly. Is there a common approach to thinking about this? Do you just accept a certain amount of FX drag as part of the EM game, or are there specific strategies (beyond just avoiding countries with notoriously volatile currencies) that experienced folks here employ to mitigate this? It's something I'm still trying to square away in my risk models.
That's a classic dilemma for sure. Have you looked into any of the currency-hedged ETFs that track EM indices? They might give you a baseline for how effective those strategies are, even if you're picking individual stocks.