The emerging market country that’s flying and we are buying

Saltydog analyst has been increasing exposure to a country that’s forecast to be the fastest growing next year.

September was a disappointing month for most developed economies. The US stock markets suffered their worst losses since last March, which was when they first really woke up to the likely consequences of the Covid-19 outbreak.

Last month, the Dow Jones Industrial average fell by 4.3%, the S&P 500 was down 4.8%, and the Nasdaq lost 5.3%. Unfortunately, what happens in the US tends to have knock-on effects all around the world.

In the UK, the FTSE 100 was lucky to get away with only losing 0.5%, but the FTSE 250 did not do as well, falling by 4.4%. Over the channel, the Paris CAC 40 was down 2.4%, while the Frankfurt DAX dropped by 3.6%.

On the whole, emerging markets did better, with the Shanghai Composite, Mumbai Sensex and Moscow RTSI all making gains. Unfortunately, the Hong Kong Hang Seng and São Paulo Ibovespa let the side down, one fell by 5% and the other was down 6.6%.

The Japanese Nikkei 225 bucked the trend, gaining 4.9% in September, but gave nearly all of that back from 1 October to 8 October as the index declined by 4.8%. 

_{Data source: Morningstar. Past performance is not a guide to future performance.}

The Indian Sensex is the only index in our table that went up in July, August, and September. July was only a modest 0.2% gain, but in August it shot up by an impressive 9.4%. In September, it only added another 2.7%, but when you consider how many other indices made losses that is still a good result. So far this year, it has gone up by over 25%.

The Indian economy struggled, along with other countries, when the first wave of the coronavirus spread around the world at the beginning of last year. Then in October, the Delta variant, which was first discovered in India, led to a massive second wave of Covid-19 cases in the country that then spread globally.

Last year, the Indian economy contracted by 7%. However, the situation is now improving and in the United Nations latest Trade and Development Report, released last month, India was forecasted growth of 7.2% in 2021. That is the second highest in the world, after China, and the report went on to suggest that the Indian economy would be the fastest growing in 2022.

The Investment Association (IA) has recently launched an India/Indian Subcontinent sector, but before that the funds investing in this region were in the Specialist sector.

In our Saltydog weekly analysis, we have always used our own sub-zones to help classify the funds in the Specialist sector.

Here’s a graph showing how they performed in the eight weeks leading up to the end of September.

The funds in the India sub-zone have been performing well for some time. Our Ocean Liner portfolio invested in the Jupiter India fund at the beginning of August, and it is now up over 9%. Last week, we increased our holding, and our Tugboat Portfolio also made a small investment in this fund.

There are three funds that we track in our India sub-zone. They are Jupiter India, Liontrust India and Stewart Investors Indian Subcontinent.

Here is a graph showing how they have performed since the beginning of May.

Another sub-zone that has caught our attention is Russia and Eastern Europe. We have not put any money into funds investing in this region yet, but they have been a topic of discussion in our recent weekly portfolio reviews.

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