Hong Kong — With markets as becalmed as this, it’s no wonder macro-traders are worried about their bonuses. A deep-dive examination of global financial markets shows only seven of about 250 assets, across classes including equity indices, sovereign bonds, currencies and commodities, were high-volatility outliers based on their price swings in 2017. That’s the lowest annual level since 2014, and follows two straight years where there were at least 10 outliers, according to the data compiled by Bloomberg as of December 21. All but one of the seven outliers were currencies, if bitcoin is classed as such. An almost 70% surge in Argentina’s Merval Index helped it join the group — a testament to investor excitement about President Mauricio Macri’s reform programme and chances of the country’s stocks getting reclassified for emerging-market indices by MSCI. The price swings shown in the analysis are expressed as z-scores — the number of standard deviations the volatility of a price is away...
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