Emerging equity markets outperformed their developed counterparts in 2007 with a 42 per cent spike versus a gain of only 9.4 per cent for the world’s developed markets.
According to the Standard & Poor’s (S&P) global stock market review, titled The World by Numbers, 11 of the 26 emerging markets increased by at least 50 per cent during 2007, with Nigeria’s 115.32 per cent gain placing it at the top of an impressive group.
The review also revealed that most of the emerging market economies delivered good returns during December last year, including India (9.09 per cent), Nigeria (8.75 per cent) and Egypt (8.07 per cent).
This compares to 19 of the 26 developed world equity markets landing in the negative territory last month, which was actually an improvement on the 24 that were down in November.
Although losses were generally modest, Iceland recorded its second month in a row of double-digit declines (negative 11.58 per cent in December and negative 15.48 per cent in November).
S&P put last year’s results down to investors’ expectation of sales growth in emerging markets that saw cash move out of the developed markets and into emerging.
