Guardian – Emerging markets have been the place to invest over the past decade. While the FTSE 100 is down more than a quarter since it peaked in December 1999, and the S&P 500 in the US by 28%, markets in Brazil, India and Russia have more than trebled in value, while China has doubled, according to figures compiled for Cash by BGC Partners.

The more recent performance of emerging markets has also been better than developed ones, undermining the traditional view that they overreact to bad news. And Bryan Coyne, head of emerging markets at BGC Partners, thinks “there’s no reason why these markets shouldn’t continue to outperform mature markets”.

Read Complete Article

Tags: brazil, china, emerging-markets, india, mature markets, russia

The Economic Times – The mavens continue to pore over figures and analyse the why, how and after-effects of bankruptcy of the major-league investment bank Lehman , on September 15 last year. It’s clear that financial innovation in the mature markets was way ahead of the curve vis-a-vis regulation and prudential norms in this decade, and especially in the run-up to the recent global financial crisis.

A recent working paper at the National Bureau of Economic Research in the US has looked into how ‘shocks to fundamentals’ that affect wealth, read capital, of key financial institutions can well set off a severe downward spiral.

Read Complete Article

Tags: financial innovation, financial-institutions, global financial crisis, mature markets