your father’s emerging markets…
I started working in emerging markets in 1984. At that time, the most important were Hong Kong and Singapore. If one were feeling adventurous, Thailand, Malaysia and even Indonesia (shudder!) beckoned. Taiwan and Korea were also on the list, but not easily accessible to foreigners.
At that time, there was a certain equivocation in the “emerging markets” term. Yes, the stock markets were relatively rudimentary and overlooked by investors in the US and the EU. But the economies of the big ones, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and Korea, were all advanced, with living standards for the average resident somewhere between those in Europe and the US.
With the notable exception of Indonesia, the 1980s-style emerging markets were all oil importers (Malaysia and Thailand have large reserves of natural gas, and export LNG, but that’s a different thing).
Back in the day, investing in Hong Kong was all about the then-colony, now SAR, with exposure to the mainland limited to the successors to the nineteenth-century opium traders and a few small manufacturers with operations on the mainland.
Mexico was the notable emerging market not in the Pacific.
…and today’s
China is now, of course, the emerging markets behemoth. Direct access to foreign portfolio investors isn’t seamless. Nor, in my view, is it desirable. However, the investment significance of Hong Kong has radically shifted, from a focus on the physical place to the access its China-related listings allows to the mainland.
Perhaps more important for today’s economic situation, however, the emerging markets arena has expanded to include much more of Latin America (think: Brazil or Venezuela)–and, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Russia and Eastern Europe as well. Some thrill-seeking investors have tiptoed into the Middle East as well.
Two strong net effects:
–the emerging markets category contains many more emerging economies, with less stable politics, and
–today’s emerging markets are heavily weighted toward exporters of natural resources, especially oil.
for 2016:
China is several years into a transition from being an export-oriented manufacturer to being a domestic demand-oriented service economy. The way I look at it, China is doing better than the consensus thinks–and will continue to do so in 2016.
The rest of the emerging markets arena is a mess. Economically, that’s mostly because so many countries depend on mineral exports. From a stock market point of view, it’s that plus the high weighting of natural resource issues (including banks that finance them) in the local indices.
My guesstimate is that Greater China will show 6% real GDP growth in 2016. As a group, the rest will be in the minus column. I have no idea what the net result will be. I’m planning on it being mildly positive.
Until the oil price begins to recover–mid-year at the earliest, I think–I don’t see this as a time to hold an emerging markets index. Individual stocks or a China fund/ETF is the way to go. Other than China, developed markets, rather than emerging markets, are the place to be.