Even Wall Street’s bottom-fishers won’t go near emerging markets

(Bloomberg) -- Emerging markets have just taken a first-quarter battering. The fear on Wall Street is that it may hardly compare with what’s coming.

While the advanced economies have gone into lockdown to contain the spread of Covid-19, triggering market turmoil of a kind unseen in generations, the world’s developing nations have yet to experience the full effects, both economic and humanitarian, of the pandemic.

True, the global dollar squeeze, collapse in commodity prices and rising distressed-debt levels have prompted pre-emptive stimulus measures across many countries, but the success or failure of these is likely to remain unknown for a while yet.