EM labels are 'unhelpful and outdated'

EM labels are ‘unhelpful and outdated’

Peter Askew, co-manager of the T. Bailey Growth fund asks, if investors can have country-specific allocations to large developed economies, why don't the largest developing countries merit separate allocation?

The term ‘broad church’ barely does any justice to the array of markets and regions the emerging markets label covers. The grouping has become broader still, with the promotion of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates from frontier market status to the MSCI Emerging Markets index earlier this month. The addition of these resource-rich states brings the total number of markets covered by the index to 23, encompassing the familiar BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, and China), and countries as diverse as Peru, Poland, and the Philippines. Although we are firm believers in the opportunities thes...