This Chart Of Interest Rates And Emerging Market Currencies Is Everything

From SocGen, this chart might just be everything.

It shows the increase in US interest rates (orange line) vs. an index of the US dollar vs. emerging market currencies (dark blue line). With virtually perfect alignment, we're seeing rates rise in the US, and the US dollar surge against emerging markets, which have been getting crushed.

There are lots of stories and potential stories embedded in this chart, including the notion that a tightening in the US could be contributing to a rise in interest rates that's sucking money away from emerging markets, and clobbering their currencies. Or the story is that the economic pendulum is swinging from the emerging world back to the US (and Europe for that matter) and that that's consistent with a rise in rates, and a strengthening of the US dollar.

Either way, this is the dominant story in markets these days, and the world is watching both lines, the rise in US rates and the collapse of emerging market currencies quite closely.