Seeing through the mist of GDP figures

It might seem obvious that a country with strong GDP growth will offer the best stockmarket growth potential. But in fact, the opposite is true. Tim Bennett explains why.

Having successfully coined the term Bric' in 2001 as a marketing weapon to sell Brazilian, Russian, Indian and Chinese funds, Goldman Sachs is at it again. This time we're being urged to buy the Mist' nations short for Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea and Turkey.

These countries have been plucked from a wider group of 11 new' emerging markets, in part because they account for 73% of the gross domestic product (GDP) of the combined group. However, while some emerging markets might be attractive, rapid GDP growth alone is no guarantee of investment success, as GMO's Jeremy Grantham points out.

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Tim graduated with a history degree from Cambridge University in 1989 and, after a year of travelling, joined the financial services firm Ernst and Young in 1990, qualifying as a chartered accountant in 1994.

He then moved into financial markets training, designing and running a variety of courses at graduate level and beyond for a range of organisations including the Securities and Investment Institute and UBS. He joined MoneyWeek in 2007.