Emerging stock markets .... good or bad?

Emerging Markets equities recovered somewhat from their steep losses suffered in January and thus were able to survive the current crisis in capital markets better than their big brothers in the developed countries like US, Japan, China...To the best of my knowledge and collective info from other resources...The MSCI (Morgan Stanley Capital International, An index publisher best known for its emerging market indices) Emerging Markets World Total Return Index (December 1988=100) advanced 7.4 % in US dollars and 4.7 % in euros.Year-to-date, the global emerging markets benchmark is down 6 % in US dollars and 9.5 % in euros.During the last fourteen months, the MSCI EM Index gained 31 % in US dollars and 13.8 % in euros.By regions, Latin America gained 8.8 % in February, Asia was up 7.4 %, and Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) advanced 6.2 %.Over the last fourteen months, Latin America was the best performer with a gain of 53.5 %, Asia came in with a total return of 29.8 % and EMEA gained 17.9 %.Performance numbers are in US dollars unless mentioned otherwise.Twenty-one markets in the MSCI Emerging Markets universe rose in February and four declined. Peru (+16.2 %), Taiwan (+14.8 %) and Thailand (+13.4 %) delivered the best performance.The Philippines (-4.2 %), India (-2.4 %) and Malaysia (-0.3 %) provided the lowest monthly returns.Over the previous fourteen months all but one of the twenty-five markets covered here rose.The best performing countries were Peru (+115.7 %), Brazil (+84.5 %) and Egypt (+69.4 %).There was only one losing market over the past fourteen months: Argentina declined by 3 %. Other relatively poor performers were Hungary (+2.4 %), Colombia (+7.7 %) and South Africa (+8.6 %).

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