Dubai Tops The World's Best Performing Stock Markets

Call it a perfect market storm of wealth creation. Since the start of 2013, the Dubai stock market has registered a near 200% gain to become the best performing financial market in the world.  The Gulf emirate's securing of the World Expo in 2020 is likely one factor behind this success as is the wider UAE's reputation as a safe-haven in a region riddled with uncertainty.  Oil averaging more than $100 a barrel for three years running, meanwhile, is driving growth towards record spending on infrastructure.

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Investors Rewarded for Trek Into Little Known Markets

Investors who ventured into frontier markets—the smaller, lesser-known cousins of emerging markets—have been rewarded with impressive equity returns over the past 18 months.  While the MSCI Emerging Markets Index has been essentially flat since the start of 2013, the MSCI Frontier Markets Index has shot up by more than 50%. Developed markets grew strongly too, but the 32% surge in the MSCI World Index was still dwarfed by frontier markets’ growth.  Individual countries have posted some significant returns, too. Since the start of 2013, Bulgaria’s market has soared 91%, Pakistan’s has jumped 88%, and Nigeria’s has risen 47%. 

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-Igor P Purlantov

Investor Confidence in Emerging Markets Highest in Years

Investor confidence in emerging markets is at its highest level for more than a year, according to one of the world’s largest independent financial advisory organisations, deVere Group.  Nigel Green, founder and chief executive of deVere Group, commented that there has been a considerable jump in client interest in this sector: “Our independent financial advisers in every global region in which we operate report that a growing number of clients are now actively expressing a keen focus on emerging markets.

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Are Emerging Markets The Next Great Trade?

I love it when perception differs from reality... that's when you can really make money in the stock market.  Take emerging markets for instance.  If you read the news regularly, you'd think emerging markets were the last place you'd want to put your money. Almost every day there's a headline decrying how the economies in these developing nations are on the verge of collapse. In 2010 it was Greece... in 2012 Egypt... last year it was Syria... and today it's Ukraine.

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-Igor P Purlantov

Emerging Markets Bounce Back

Investors are settling in for another ride in emerging markets.  Uneven stock indexes and low bond yields in the U.S., Europe and Japan are pushing waves of investor cash into markets from Brazil to South Africa that suffered big losses as recently as this past winter. Government-bond yields in the U.S. and Germany hit 2014 lows on Wednesday in response to the latest signs of soft Western growth.

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-Igor P Purlantov

India Markets Soar to New Record

Indian shares soared to new peaks on Friday after early returns suggested a resounding election victory for the pro-business BJP party, while a weak performance on Wall Street kept other emerging markets subdued.  Analysts say measures taken by the outgoing Congress party and the Reserve Bank of India have stabilised Indian markets in recent months, but gains have accelerated since the BJP named Narendra Modi as its candidate for prime minister in mid-September.

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-Igor P Purlantov

UAE and Qatar Get Emerging Market Status

Global markets index provider MSCI late on Wednesday officially reclassified the MSCI UAE and MSCI Qatar Indexes from Frontier Markets to Emerging Markets, coinciding with the May 2014 Semi-Annual Index Review.  “MSCI’s reclassification of these countries and their upcoming inclusion in our flagship MSCI Emerging Markets Index reflects the broader global opportunity set available to international institutional investors today,” said Baer Pettit, Managing Director and Global Head of the MSCI Index Business.

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-Igor P Purlantov

Emerging Markets Buy Cheap Dollars to Build Reserves

Nations from Colombia to Indonesia are taking advantage of the longest emerging-market currencies rally since 2009 to pile up record reserves, bolstering their ability to fend off the next foreign-exchange crisis. The 12 developing nations with the biggest foreign reserves outside of China added $34 billion in the past three months, lifting their combined holdings to $2.98 trillion on April 30, the most since Bloomberg began compiling the data in 2008. A gauge of 20 emerging-market currencies is recovering after tumbling in February to the lowest level since April 2009.

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-Igor P Purlantov

Pioneer Investments Bets on Emerging Markets

Count Pioneer Investments among the big money managers dipping a toe in emerging markets again after years of disappointing returns for the asset class. The Boston-based money manager, which oversees roughly US$250 billion in assets, this month began to move money into emerging markets, where it had previously been running an underweight position, said group chief investment officer Giordano Lombardo.

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-Igor P Purlantov

Calls to Scoop Up Emerging Market Assets

Emerging market assets have suffered through a brutal selloff, but now the sentiment tide is taking a sharper turn toward the once-shunned segment.  "It's been a tough 12-18 months for emerging markets. We find that positioning in these markets just broadly across the region is at its lowest point in years," Gokul Laroia, co-CEO for Asia Pacific at Morgan Stanley, told CNBC.

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