Friday, July 22, 2011

Emerging markets versus developed markets

I recently updated the world market capitalizations by looking at the equities, local bonds, international bonds in the developed and emerging/frontier markets, as well as the market capitalizations as a % of regional (nominal) GDP.  This gives us a big picture view of the investable universe of securities (commodities and currencies are excluded for now).

My observations:

• Developed countries have 88% of total marketable debt in the world but have only 63% share of world GDP, in contrast to emerging/frontier countries which have 12% of marketable debt but 33% of world GDP. Developed countries on the other hand represent 72% of world equity markets, while Emerging Markets, 28%. 
• Developed market total marketable debt/GDP is 193% vs. emerging/frontier markets of 52%.
• Both Emerging Market EMEA (Emerging Europe, Middle East and Africa) and EM Latin equities as % of total and debt as % of total are smaller than their world GDP share; which means the potential for both equities and debt for these regions to do well. EM Asia's equities as % of total is the same as its world GDP share though its debt as % of total is only at 7% compared to 17% of GDP share.

(please double-click to enlarge)
So where would you rather invest for the long-run?

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