China tops the charts

China has bucked the trend to come out on top as the best-performing emerging market of 2014.

It's been another frustrating year for investors in emerging markets. The MSCI Emerging Markets Index fell by over 4% in dollar terms, and earlier this month hit an 18-month low. Asia ex-Japan eked out a gain, but oil and commodity-exposed Latin America fell by 15% and eastern Europe bedevilled by its proximity to Russia fell by 36%.

It's a reminder once again that fast economic growth doesn't necessarily mean a strong stockmarket performance. China's domestic stocks, as represented by the Shanghai Composite index, have been the world's top performers this year, up almost 40% in dollar terms despite the slowdown in the Chinese economy.

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Andrew Van Sickle
Editor, MoneyWeek

Andrew is the editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He grew up in Vienna and studied at the University of St Andrews, where he gained a first-class MA in geography & international relations.

After graduating he began to contribute to the foreign page of The Week and soon afterwards joined MoneyWeek at its inception in October 2000. He helped Merryn Somerset Webb establish it as Britain’s best-selling financial magazine, contributing to every section of the publication and specialising in macroeconomics and stockmarkets, before going part-time.

His freelance projects have included a 2009 relaunch of The Pharma Letter, where he covered corporate news and political developments in the German pharmaceuticals market for two years, and a multiyear stint as deputy editor of the Barclays account at Redwood, a marketing agency.

Andrew has been editing MoneyWeek since 2018, and continues to specialise in investment and news in German-speaking countries owing to his fluent command of the language.