It's not been all bad news for emerging markets

Emerging markets have had a tough year. Still, as investment guru Jeffrey Gundlach notes, they've still outperformed global indices.

John Stepek
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published
in Features

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Jeffrey Gundlach, founderand chief investment officer, DoubleLine Capital
(Image credit: 2017 Getty Images)

Want to know where to invest for the next seven to 20 years? Buy emerging market equities, says DoubleLine's Jeffrey Gundlach. It's been a grim year for most asset classes including emerging markets yet overall they have managed to outperform global indices, notes Gundlach.

On top of that, as measured by the cyclically-adjusted price/earnings ratio (CAPE which looks at earnings in the context of the long-term economic cycle), emerging markets are trading at less than half the valuation of US stocks. Based on that alone, says Zero Hedge, Gundlach reckons that emerging markets "could outperform US stocks by 100%". But just remember this is long term, so you'll need to be patient.

Gundlach is not bullish on the short term by any means. Europe's economic growth is "absolutely horrible", while export-sensitive markets such as South Korea are being hit particularly hard. He also notes that 75% to 80% of global markets are in a "death cross" pattern, which is an unpromising (if imperfect) technical indicator. "It is quite possible there will be a global recession," he says.

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Even the US, where growth has remained far healthier than elsewhere, with few signs of slowing growth outside the housebuilding and buying sectors, is not immune. At the start of 2018, Gundlach forecast that the S&P 500 would end the year with a loss, a call that now looks likely to prove correct.

John Stepek
John Stepek

John Stepek is a senior reporter at Bloomberg News and a former editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He graduated from Strathclyde University with a degree in psychology in 1996 and has always been fascinated by the gap between the way the market works in theory and the way it works in practice, and by how our deep-rooted instincts work against our best interests as investors.

He started out in journalism by writing articles about the specific business challenges facing family firms. In 2003, he took a job on the finance desk of Teletext, where he spent two years covering the markets and breaking financial news.

His work has been published in Families in Business, Shares magazine, Spear's Magazine, The Sunday Times, and The Spectator among others. He has also appeared as an expert commentator on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, BBC Radio Scotland, Newsnight, Daily Politics and Bloomberg. His first book, on contrarian investing, The Sceptical Investor, was released in March 2019. You can follow John on Twitter at @john_stepek.

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