Enterprising Investor Forum

Have you ever wondered which countries have been the best performers since the global equity market bottom in 2003? Well, thanks to the Bespoke Investment Group, you can look at the detail here.

Seeing Brazil at the top of the list is probably not that surprising but most people would probably not have guessed that South Africa outperformed Russia or that Taiwan was ahead of China.

Another interesting point is that despite calls for Japan to come back and deliver some returns, it keeps on lagging and leaving investors waiting for a turnaround.

It looks like the top performers here may be taking a breather and that the US may be ready for a bit of a comeback in 2009.

Let’s see what the future holds in store…

Just a short post on recent events in Russia to get you thinking…

We have all heard about the recent news with Georgia and revamped concerns about the stability of Russia and it’s attitude towards foreign investors, people who challenge the regime, etc, etc… but does this justify the recent sell-off - also linked to Oil?

Naturally, the above chart is not a big surprise, especially taking into account that about 50% of Russia’s market capitalization is in commodities but does the geo-political risk and commodity sell-off warrant the fact that the RSX (ETF tracking the Russian market) has wiped out all of the YTD performance and that it is back to about September 2007 levels?

Most observers usually say that things in Russia are never as good as the look in good times and usually not as bad as they seem in the downturns…. the Enterprising Investor with a long-term horizon should try and profit from this by targeting an interesting entry point.

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