[Retric]

Google etc may be a US based company, but they can leverage emerging markets just fine.

There’s a stronger argument to be made for small caps, but stock buybacks allow any company’s stock to effectively experience exponential growth even with flat earnings. IE there’s little long term difference between buying back 2% a stock every year and ~2% actual growth every year assuming you never hold the majority of shares. (as in 1/0.98 ~= 1.02)

[epolanski]

> Google etc may be a US based company, but they can leverage emerging markets just fine.

Not sure what are you trying to say.

[Retric]

You’re buying stock in a company not a market, and a company doesn’t need to be based in a country to profit from that country.

Plenty of companies listed on foreign exchanges make the majority of their money from the US market etc.

[epolanski]

You can buy "into a market" by investing in a ETF following the MSCI EM or SP500. In any case not sure what's your point about single stock companies in a discussion about market indexes.

[Retric]

> You can buy "into a market" by investing in a ETF following the MSCI EM or SP500.

Nope. A more accurate description is saying you’re buying into a specific subset of a Market by buying shares of specific companies. Hand waving them as if they are the same thing doesn’t actually make them the same thing.

The MSCI EM, SP500, etc etc are simply a collection of public companies not the market of a given country. Which is why index funds all behave in fundamentally different ways than the actual markets we’re talking about.

Now if you do want more exposure to the upsides of a growing economy there are options, it’s just not a simple as buying an index fund.

[epolanski]

You keep being out of topic.

This thread is about indexes and it started by a user stating that emerging markets indexes have been in line or outpaced global and even most of the advanced economies ones.

[Retric]

What these indexes are and how they behave is definitely on topic. Some of the indexes we can point to have in the past seen outsized returns, but many haven’t especially over specific timeframes. Currency fluctuations play a huge role, as does perception of risk etc.

Your previous statement about why in general they would have an advantage was inaccurate. As you have seemingly realized.

[rsynnott]

> You’re buying stock in a company not a market

I mean, we're talking about index funds, where you essentially are buying a market.

[Retric]

A set of Stocks != a market.

For one thing you’re only buying public companies, that in and of itself is a significant difference.