Emerging markets: A long-term opportunity?

Emerging markets have taken a battering of late as fears over the withdrawal of quantitative easing (QE) in the US have sent investors in the region heading for the hills. In the six months to 28 August, the MSCI Emerging Market index shed an eye-watering 14.2%, while the MSCI World index notched up a 4.2% gain (see chart 1 on next page). As a halt to the inflow of cheap dollars looms, emerging market currencies also suffered heavy losses, with the Indian rupee, Indonesian rrupiah, Turkish lira and Brazilian real all hitting multi-year lows against the US dollar. This stampede out of eme...