Our Taipan Emerging Market Index saw a slight gain today of .52%. Nothing to cheer about -- except when you compare it with last week's trouncing of 14.28%. So that puts us at a five-day gain of 103.6%.
We'll take it...
Key
ALL ORDINARIES IDX (ASX: ^AORD) Australia
BSE SENSEX (Bombay: ^BSESN) India
IBOVESPA SAO PAULO (^BVSP) Brazil
EGYPT CMA GENL INDX (Cairo: ^CCSI) Egypt
HANG SENG INDEX (HKSE: ^HSI) Hong Kong
COMPOSITE INDEX (Jakarta: ^JKSE) Jakarta
COMPOSITE INDEX (Kuala Lumpur: ^KLSE) Kuala Lumpar
KOSPI Composite Index (KSE: ^KS11) South Korea
MERVAL BUENOS AIRES (Buenos Aires: ^MERV) Argentina
IPC (Mexico: ^MXX) Mexico
NZX 50 INDEX GROSS (NZSE: ^NZ50) New Zealand
IGBM (Madrid: ^SMSI) Spain
TEL-AV TASE-100 IND (^TA100) Israel
TSEC weighted index (Taiwan: ^TWII) Taiwan
SSE Composite Index (Shanghai: 000001.SS) Shanghai
iShares MSCI South Africa Index (EZA) South Africa
RTSI INDEX (RUS: RTS.RS) Russia
ISHARES MSCI THAILAN (NYSEArca: THD) Thailand
iShares MSCI Turkey Invest Mkt Index (TUR) Turkey
The biggest winner this week is the New Zealand ^NZ50 Index Gross, which closed with a gain of 1.72%. Although the business climate in New Zealand suffers from inflation fears, the ^NZ50 rose mostly on energy, media and healthcare.
Our weekly 103.6% surge compares with a lackluster weekly gain of 1.61% by the S%P 500 and the Dow's virtually flat performance as of this writing.
The big swing in our index confirms two important factors for investors interested in emerging markets...
The first confirms that emerging markets are certainly volatile. The second factor could be framed in the spread of global inflation.
The inflation contagion is driven by stratospheric increases in food and energy. What's important, though, is that a closer look at the global economy reveals that no market is truly safe anymore.
We are living in a new age of volatility -- leaving investors to reconsider emerging markets as a successful diversification strategy. After all, if you believe that all markets are now equally volatile, it only makes sense to put your money with higher growth economies.
--Irwin Greenstein
