Oil has been a huge swing factor for markets in recent months and China will determine the fate of us all. But if there is one thing that emerging markets investors need to watch — and try to understand — it is still the Federal Reserve.

The US central bank not only sets monetary policy for the world’s biggest economy — its ostensible task; by doing so, it determines the direction of the dollar, the amount of available global liquidity and, by implication, how much will flow in and out of emerging markets.

The tricky thing is that despite the Fed’s laudable attempts to improve transparency over the past few years, its intentions are as hard to read as ever. This is partly due to the fact that it has been forced to resort to unconventional tools in the aftermath of the global financial crisis and is even now operating close to the “zero lower bound” where the effects of monetary policy decisions are not straightforward.