Emerging markets have been laggards in the past few years compared to their  developed world peers. Among the developed stocks, U.S. stocks especially had a superb run last year compared to European stocks. However this year, the tables seem to have turned with European stocks outperforming American stocks so far. With the poor performance of emerging stocks …

Continue reading ‘Three Reasons Why Investors Should Hold Emerging Market Stocks’ »

In developed countries most publicly-listed companies are not controlled by families. In the U.S. less than one-third of the S&P 500 companies are family-owned businesses according to a study by McKinsey&Company. But in emerging markets many of the large public companies are owned by families. This is similar to the situation that existed in the U.S. in the …

Continue reading ‘Family Ownership: A Compelling Reason To Invest In Emerging Market Companies?’ »

The  MSCI Emerging Markets Index gives exposure to large and mid-cap companies in 21 emerging markets that include: Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Russia, South Africa, Taiwan, Thailand and Turkey. At the end of 2013, the index had 824 constituents. The chart below shows the country …

Continue reading ‘A Review of the MSCI Emerging Markets Index’ »

Emerging markets have not performed well so far this year. Up until a few years ago emerging markets were the place to be for global investors seeking explosive growth. But economic growth in these markets has slowed sigificnatly due to the slowdown in the Chinese economy and other factors. As a result emerging markets have …

Continue reading ‘Which Emerging Markets To Consider For Investment’ »

Latin American countries have made substantial progress over the past two decades or so. For the most part Brazil and other countries used their wealth from commodity exports to improve infrastructure, uplift their population out of poverty and other social causes. The infographic below shows the transformation of Latin America as a whole over the …

Continue reading ‘The Transformation of Latin America 1993-2013’ »