Emerging markets pick up steam

The MSCI Emerging Markets index has gained almost a tenth since 1 January, while its developed-market counterpart is up 5%.

Emerging markets suffered a nasty fall at the beginning of 2016. But this year, the MSCI Emerging Markets index has gained almost a tenth since 1 January, while its developed-market counterpart is up 5%. That's the index's best start relative to developed-market stocks since 2013. Global investors have become more confident, pouring $2.7bn into emerging-market funds last week, the highest weekly total for half a year.

Chalk it up to an improving global growth outlook, with the turn in the commodities cycle and an incipient recovery in world trade the most notable features. "In Asia's export dynamos, trade is picking up steam," as The Economist points out. South Korea, once of the world's most open economies, is considered a bellwether in this regard; its exports have climbed for three months on the trot. China's exports rose year-on-year for the first time in ten months in January.

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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.