[ximi]

Well, that's why the original commenter mentioned exposure. You don't invest all your money into just one market. The idea is once again for things to balance out at the end of the day/year/decade.

Invest into multiple emerging markets, chances are they won't all do bad at the same time, especially if they are in different parts of the globe (take India, Brazil and Indonesia for example), put some into an european index fund, etc.

You seem to be most comfortable with the US market, so the bulk of the assets you decided to invest in equities go there, say 70% and to make things easy put 15% into Europe and 15% into emerging markets. Now you have some diversification, but could still feel comfortable enough to not be worried about your money disappearing over night.

[ivm]

Brazil is a disaster. In LA Chile has a quite stable economy and cautious banks (but it could be a pain to bring money into the country because of this).