Acronym Investing in Emerging Markets

Ever since Goldman Sachs analyst Jim O’Neill coined the term BRIC to denote the largest emerging market economies (Brazil, Russia, India, and China), investors have pondered the “next big thing” in emerging market plays. Goldman later coined the term MIST (Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea, and Turkey) to denote the largest emerging market economies in a group it called the Next 11 (or N-11). We’ve taken another step and coined two new groups: PENS (Philippines, Egypt, Nigeria, and South Africa) and VIVA (Vietnam, Israel, Venezuela, and Argentina, although Israel only rarely appears on lists of emerging market nations). Hopefully, no one goes too far with the acronyms and puts us in a STUPOR (Slovakia, Thailand, Ukraine, Peru, Oman, and Romania): we checked and emerging market managers have meaningful investing only behind Thailand and Peru. Here is how emerging market mutual funds have been managed to play on these four acronyms: