Emerging Markets Continue Trend of Positive Returns

August 9, 2007 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - Emerging market returns outpaced developed market returns in July, seeing a 4.53% gain, while developed markets posted a 2.02% loss, according to Standard & Poor's global stock market review.

This comes at no surprise, when looking at the 12-month period ending in July, in which emerging markets had a 53.94% gain, more than double the developed markets gain of 21.52%.

Emerging markets had a strong showing in the second quarter of 2007 as well. Emerging equity markets rose 14.81% during the second quarter of 2007 versus 6.82% for developed equity markets (See Emerging Markets Outperform Domestic Markets in Q207 ).

For the month, 10 of the 25 emerging markets finished in positive territory with Thailand (+14.17%), Turkey (+13.62%) and China (+14.47%) posting significant returns. Negative returns for the emerging markets were modest, with Mexico (-3.44%), the Philippines (-3.33%) and Pakistan (-3.25%) showing the greatest declines.

The top three markets by weight, Japan, U.K. and U.S., were all down, posting losses of 0.26%, 2.20% and 3.41%, respectively.

Only 12 of the 27 developed markets posted positive returns in July. Double-digit gains were posted by South Korea (11.56%) and Slovenia (10.42%), with the rest of the developed markets quickly falling.  

In July, 8 of the 10 sectors posted losses, led by Financials with a 4.27% decline.  Materials (+1.12%) and Industrials (+0.96%) were the only sectors to post gains.  Marine issues, a sub-industry of Industrials, increased 13.94% in July, and is now posting a substantial 12-month return of 103.5%.

To see the full S&P report visit www.standardandpoors.com/indices .  

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