The emerging markets had under-performed the US meaningfully since 2011 and so it is a very mixed bag. The European markets -- by and large and certainly in US dollar terms -- are not at new highs. India after its very good performance so far this year has grossly outperformed the US this year. We have to be very careful. Some markets will continue to go up and others will go down and within markets, there will be some stocks that will go up and other stocks are probably extremely expensive and extended and will go down.
Already a year ago, I mentioned that if I had to invest the money for 5 or 10 years, my belief was that India would outperform the US because the US is a highly priced market. It is now 54% of global market capitalisation and India relatively would outperform the US for many years. So yes, I would say, already for 18 months or so. my view has been that you will make more money in emerging markets and last year some emerging markets in Asia significantly outperformed the US.
We were up between 15 and 25% in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam while the US hardly moved up. So far this year, despite all this hoopla (about the US market, most of the European markets have outperformed the S&P and emerging markets. Practically every emerging market has outperformed the US.
Recently PWC published a study about the long-term outlook of the global economy and about the ongoing shift in the balance of economic power in the world which essentially showed very clearly how some countries had become very important economic powers over the last 20 to 30 years including China and Vietnam and also India to some extent.
That study concluded that by 2050, India, purchasing power adjusted, could be the third largest economy or the even the second largest economy. If you look at what has happened in Europe and the US where despite all the fiscal stimulus and money printing you have essentially very anaemic growth and you look at China where you have around 6%-7% growth while India has over 7% growth, who knows?
Over the long term if you can grow even 5%, which in the global economy is a very rapid growth rate compared to Europe and the US, as an investor for the next 5 years, 10 years or 20 years, I would find ways to invest in India and in emerging markets in general.
The emerging markets that is going to grow probably the most is Vietnam and Indo-China, Cambodia Laos, Myanmar. But having the outlook for India and with the proviso that we do not get into a major military confrontation. If we have peace and are nor beset by any huge natural disaster like a pandemic, then I the outlook for the Chinese economy, for the Indian economy, for emerging markets in general is far superior to the outlook in our rotten western democracies.
