Emerging economies are bearing the brunt of the global meltdown, giving double-digit negative returns in the past three months. However, Indian stocks have managed to perform the best among Bric (Brazil, Russia, India and China) nations in August.
According to Standard & Poor’s monthly stock market review, The World by Numbers, “ The world’s emerging markets have fared even worse than their global peers, falling 7.09 per cent in August and 19.40 per cent over the past three months,” the review said.
With the credit crisis casting its shadow on the international market, developed and emerging equity markets lost ground in August and have now produced double-digit negative returns over the past three months, it said.
Despite equity returns from the emerging economies declining for a fourth straight month in August, the Indian market managed to give the least negative return of 1.35 per cent. While the emerging markets gave negative returns of 7.09 per cent in the month.
Among the Bric economies as well, equity markets in India performed better than their peers, whereas Russia declined 15.23 per cent, followed by Brazil (10.04 per cent) and China (7.82 per cent).
For the three-month period ended August, the Indian equity market returns dropped 15.19 per cent, while they had given negative returns of 10.83 per cent during the past year.
Further, amid political instability, returns from the equity markets in Pakistan declined 20.57 per cent.
Among the emerging market pack, only Philippines (1.68 per cent) and Thailand (0.90 per cent) gave positive returns during the month.
According to the S&P review, developed equity markets lost 1.56 per cent in August and have fallen 11.55 per cent over the past three months.
“Global equity markets continued their dramatic decline that began in mid-May, decreasing investor networth in August by $0.8 trillion,” S&P Senior Index Analyst Howard Silverblatt said, adding that year-to-date through August, investor networth has declined by $6.4 trillion.
