Indian equities' persistent performance

Over the past 30 years, despite a difficult backdrop, equity market returns are striking

I read an interesting report by BofA Securities recently, lamenting the performance of emerging markets (EMs) and Asia, excluding Japan. The report tracked 30 years of equity-market performance and the results were quite startling. China was added to the MSCI equity index in December 1992. Since then, (almost 30 years of data) Asia ex-Japan equities have delivered a dollar return of only 3.7 per cent per annum (excluding dividends). In contrast, the US has delivered 7.8 per cent returns per annum. Japan itself had a return stream of only 1.1 per cent and Europe was 4.1 per cent. EMs as