Mark Gilbert , Columnist

South Africa's Downgrade Is a Sideshow

History shows hedging against currency risk matters far more.

April 5, 2017 at 5:00 AM UTC

Mark Gilbert is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering asset management. A former London bureau chief for Bloomberg News, he is author of “Complicit: How Greed and Collusion Made the Credit Crisis Unstoppable.”

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South Africa's downgrade on Monday after the nation's finance minister was fired means three of the five BRICS nations now have junk credit assessments at S&P Global Ratings.

For dollar-based investors betting on the group's stocks and bonds, the history of this decade suggests that matters less -- much less -- than hedging the currency risk accompanying those investments.