Emerging Markets Are Hot

After a horrid collapse late last year, emerging market stocks have come roaring back in 2015.  Not without considerable basebuilding, however.  Several emerging market exchange-traded funds spent the last six months churning in head-and-shoulder bottom formations. The chart for the low-cost leader, the Schwab Emerging Markets Equity ETF (NYSE Arca: SCHE) is typical. 

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Emerging Market Central Banks: Doves Into Hawks

Investors see emerging market central bankers as doves. But they are likely to turn hawkish.

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Some Emerging Markets More Promising Than Others

Buy low, sell high. This is the only secret investors need to know. But the big problem right now is trying to get a handle on which assets are actually going cheap.  Major western indices have been hitting new records, with even the FTSE 100 coming to the party, despite its heavy weighting to the slumping energy and mining sectors. But worries about “secular stagnation” have clouded the outlook – and investors have been corralled by fear into similar asset classes. Finding investments that are cheap and under-owned is becoming increasingly difficult.

http://tinyurl.com/kwkt3br

Russia Leads Emerging Markets Higher

Stocks in developing economies were a pretty good place to be in the first quarter.  The MSCI Emerging Markets Index rose 1.9%–reflecting price returns converted to dollars–in the first quarter, while the Standard & Poor’s 500 index was up 0.4%.  The devil was in the details. Latin America, off 10%, was down for the count in the latest quarter. Eastern Europe was a surprise winner, with a gain of 11%, powered by Russian and Hungarian equities. Asia showed strength, too (up 5%), though for all the hype about India’s gross-domestic-product growth surpassing that of China, the latter’s stocks shone brighter in the latest quarter.

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