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Best Emerging Market Sites on the Web

Green - Free Site

Blue - Free/Premium

Orange - Premium Only

For Emerging Markets Trends, News, Background and Insights:

Financial Times Emerging Markets The best place on the web for up-to-date emerging markets news. It provides a good mix of insightful, timely articles and breaking news and quotes from emerging equity and capital markets. You will have to register and most of the content requires a paid subscription.

Economist This should be one of your first stops when checking emerging markets news and analysis. Solid research, excellent insights on emerging markets, in both weekly news and special sections. It features free clear, concise country briefings with useful facts and figures, some downloadable in Excel format. Like most print publications, you must subscribe to access premium content, but quite of lot of info is there for the taking. Its free email newsletters are very good as well.

Forbes Emerging Markets Emerging Markets news, targeting business and investment themes and issues. Key indices for regions and major emerging markets nations. Stories are good, but not comprehensive, as most of the content is based on premium feature material from the hard copy and online magazine.

Euromoney Emerging Markets is an excellent, free access source of information. Although intended for investors, bankers and brokers working in the debt markets, it provides a broad range of coverage. A bit technical for some but a must-read for those who wish to track emerging market economies and their capital markets. Requires registration with your email; be sure to review the “opt-out” boxes on the form which may grant Euromoney permission to use your email for marketing purposes. Euromoney operates other premium sites and offers a wide range of big-ticket reports and products. This one is for the rest of us.

World News Network A terrific news site. Colorful, well-organized and truly global. One of the few free sites with daily news from Africa. The news is organized by country however, and business stories are mixed with soccer scores.

Roubini Global Economics is a highly regarded macroeconomic website. It offers news and links to blogs and leading publications. Designed to keep financial and corporate investors well-informed, most of the content is premium. However, there are solid links to blogs that cover the global economy and emerging markets, including founder Nouriel Roubini, an NYU professor, and former US Treasury executive Brad Setser.

globalEDGE™ is a knowledge web-portal that connects international business professionals worldwide to a wealth of information, insights, and learning resources on global business activities. Partially funded by a U.S. Department of Education Title VI B grant, this site is largely hit or miss. Some of the country information is very basic world atlas data, but there are some excellent insights. Spend a few minutes surfing. Of particular interest: the Market Potential Indicators

Political Risk Service The PRS Group operates two websites, www.countrydata.com and www.icrgonline.com Both are fee-based sites that provide current country-specific information such as international investment restrictions; regimes and probabilities; investment restrictions; equity restrictions; operations restrictions; taxation discrimina­tion; repatriation restrictions; exchange controls; five-year forecasts; politi­cal and economic turmoil; investment restrictions; trade restrictions; domestic economic problems; international economic problems. Icrgonline.com focuses on pre-packaged reports. Country Data allows use to customize the data you would like with a clickable menu. If you only want, for example, a “composite” risk rating on China including historical and 2006 monthly ratings, you’ll pay around $55.00.

Asia Inc is the website of Asia Inc magazine. Articles from previous issues are free to non-subscribers. The content is less hardcore than most Asian business sites, and you can get a feel for the business culture of the leading Asian economies and read about mover and shakers. The “Who’s Hot in Asia” section is interesting.

Campbell R. Harvey’s Homepage Campbell R. Harvey is Professor of International Business at Duke University and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. An excellent collection of online content and downloadable research, much of which relates to emerging markets. An absolute must—Campbell’s Country Risk Analysis section.

The International Finance Corporation The International Finance Corporation (IFC) promotes private sector investment in developing countries. Not geared to passive investors, but there is a great deal of excellent information and data relating to business in emerging markets. Check out the Research Desk link. A member of the World Bank Group.

International Monetary Fund The IMF is an organization of 184 countries, working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty. In emerging markets circles, the IMF is either a hero or goat because of the conditions it attaches to its economic aid. Nevertheless, the IMF is active in most emerging markets, and it offers a wealth of free economic reports and papers on individual economies. You won’t find any company research and much of the content deals with bureaucratic issues, but there is plenty of good stuff, most of it free.

Business Monitor International This is an excellent site intended for professionals and businesspeople involved in global emerging markets trade and investment. Their products include daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly services covering political risk, finance, macroeconomic performance, outlook and forecast, industry sectors and the business operating environment. Very little free content here, but BMI does offer very good free email newsbriefs, by region.

Stratfor Offers “predictive intelligence” covering geopolitical trends around the world. Stratfor specializes in providing situational awareness, focused insight and actionable intelligence in the areas of geopolitics, security and public policy. The company sells a variety of reports and offers custom services to clients. However, it has some provocative free content including “Breaking Intelligence” on its home page and several free intelligence reports available via email. Sometimes, the material is directly relevant to emerging markets investing, such as several articles about the Asian energy sector. Much of the content focuses on political issues such as recent items on Hugo Chavez and Hamas.

Mexican Ministry of Finance and Credit An excellent site for Mexico watchers. Hosted by the Mexican Finance Secretariat, this site includes information on public finance, economic programs, and financial activities in Mexico. This represents a great step forward for the emerging market sector, where governments are often vague and ambiguous about their financial policies. It is designed to increase confidence in the Mexican economy and is a must for anyone owning or considering Mexican stocks.

Emerging Markets Investment Sites:

Marketwatch I know, it doesn’t take an expert to recommend marketwatch.com. But its global markets section covers key foreign markets, ETFs and ADRs, with up-to-date articles and commentary. Quotes aren’t real-time, but what do you expect for free?

MSCI MSCI’s global equity indices are the most widely used international equity benchmarks. Institutional investors use them and several mutual funds and ETF’s emulate them. If your favorite online investing site doesn’t quote them, regular visits to www.msci.com are a must.

Bloomberg World Stock Indices World stock market performance.

ISI Emerging Markets ISI Emerging Markets aggregates news, financials and company data for over 55 countries in a multi-language format. Much of the data is of intended for financial professionals, but if you want in depth information about small emerging markets like Cambodia and the Lithuania, this is the site for you. Virtually all of the content is fee-based. ISI is owned by Euromoney, which also owns emergingmarkets.org.

ShibuiMarkets is a leading global financial portal that offers some hard-to-find information on the financial fundamentals of companies around the globe, including emerging markets. Like BradyNet, Shibui focuses on emerging market fixed income securities. In-depth reports will cost you, and so will live quotes and corporate intelligence. The free database is good, includes a stock screener, and features companies in over 100 countries. Some of the data appears outdated, but financial reporting requirements vary from country to country, so foreign stock data isn’t always as fresh as US listings. You can search Shibui’s database directly from HERE:

EmergingPortfolio.com is a leading provider of fund data, research and consulting. This site is one of my favorites, even though very little content is free. EPFR tracks 10,000 international, emerging markets and US funds with $5 trillion in assets, including offshore and US-registered funds. The company monitors the flow of funds in and out of equity and bonds, countries and sectors, and cross border allocations. Emerging markets are maturing, but they are still volatile, and fund managers run hot and cold. This site helps sophisticated investors “follow the money.”

Investor Relations Asia Pacific Asian companies often have a difficulty reaching global investors. IRAsia is an online investor relations site that charges companies to offer annual reports and company presentations on its site. You’ll find material from over 2,500 companies, much of it hard-to-find elsewhere.

Thomson Financial provides in-depth premium research to investment professionals, including some valuable emerging markets coverage. For example, its Worldscope product features detailed information on over 40,000 public companies in more than 50 developed and emerging markets.

Global Financial Data Global Financial Data is an excellent source of historical stock market, financial, and economic data unavailable from any other online source. The GFD Database includes over 8500 current and historical data series from over 200 countries including emerging markets. In fact, many of our series extend back two centuries. Premium content site.

World’vest Base The WVB global database contains financial statement data on over 30,000 companies in over 80 countries from Asia, Africa, Australasia, Europe, Latin America and North America

Standard & Poor’s Offers indices that cover certain emerging markets. The quickest way to access the data is to simply type “emerging markets” in the search box on the home page.

Corporate Information Maintained by Wright’s Investor service, offers detailed corporate reports on more than 30,000 companies in 50 countries. You can purchase reports on a pay-per-view basis.

Ibbotson Research This site has very limited specific content for emerging markets investors, but it makes our list because the company is an early pioneer in asset allocation research, education and tools. Its education section and free asset allocation indexes will give you some idea of how investing in emerging markets—and international equities in general—will impact your portfolio. Look for the “Education” and “Knowledge Center” links.

Emerging Markets Companion This is a portal that appears to have run out of gas after the last emerging markets correction. For example, its conference schedule’s latest entry is from 1990; the latest “Market Opinion” is from 2000. Some of the links are live; some are not. But the site itself is free and will click you through to some valuable data.

ETF Reader Offers educational articles on ETF investing basics. Chapters focus on fund families; precious-metal ETFs; fees and taxes. Includes a glossary. No specific material on emerging markets, but if you plan to invest via ETFs, this site is a very good primer.

Online Brokers

Many—but not all—online brokers allow you to trade foreign stocks. However, you often need to contact a “live broker” to do so. We are currently preparing a comprehensive guide to online trading of foreign stocks. Watch for it.

Interactive Brokers Offers a "Trader Workstation" provides direct access to stocks, options, futures, foreign exchanges and bonds that can be bought and sold in more than 50 markets in 14 countries. You can trade on major European and Asian exchanges as well as via ECNs and on foreign futures exchanges. Note that some securities are not available to US investors, principally non-US stock and cash index options. Since you will likely be trading in a foreign currency, you will have additional steps, such as opening an fx account, or depositing dollars and take out a margin loan in the local currency.

TD Waterhouse and etrade also offer some international trading capabilities.

Emerging Market Stock Exchanges

A good place to start is with emerging markets stock exchanges. These sites vary in the amount of disclosure, user-friendless and currency. We’ve included the London Stock Exchanges because—like US exchanges and NASDAQ—some important emerging market companies are listed there.

ETF’s and Closed End Funds

Index ETFs are essentially passive index funds that provide investors with the opportunity to invest in a portfolio of securities in a single transaction. They trade like stocks—investors purchase and sell ETF shares, rather than buy and redeem them from the fund itself, as is the case with traditional open-end mutual funds. ETF’s are popular among emerging markets investors, but there are pros and cons. These sites contain valuable information on emerging markets iShares, VIPERS, BLDRs, Powershares and more.

ETFConnect This terrific site is well-designed and offers clearly-written valuable information on ETF’s and closed-end funds. If you know the symbol of the ETF in question, use the search box and you will be taken to a “quick facts” tearsheet that provides an excellent summary. The content and tools is too rich to be described here. We suggest you click on “Site Map” along the upper right of the page; you’ll be taken to a page that serves as an excellent table of contents. This link http://www.etfconnect.com/select/etf/global.asp will take you directly to the Global equity index ETF’s, and includes many emerging markets ETF’s.

MarketWatch ETF Center From the marketwatch home page, click on the mutual funds/eft tab and then under tools find the link to the ETF Center. Excellent screeners sort funds by regions, sectors and in the advanced screener section, by price and return. Excellent up-to-date articles as well. Registration required.

ETF Digest This site is the home of “ETF pioneer” David Fry. The site appears primarily intended to market ETF Digest, which costs $39.95 a month (30-day free trial). The core of this offering is Fry’s trading system rather than objective research. The newsletter contains trading signals, but also contains insights and portfolio advice. There is free content as well, in the form of commentary, articles, and sample portfolios.

Morningstar Exchange Traded Funds Like etfconnect.com, Morningstar offers a thorough, well-designed ETF website. Most of the content overlaps with etfconnect.com. Morningstar does offer a few additional performance measures, but we prefer the design of the etfconnect.com site, which displays relevant information on a single page; Morningstar’s site requires more clicks. Largely a matter of taste. You will also find valuable information

Site by Site! Closed End Funds Center This site offers closing prices and news on many, but not all, closed-end funds. Simple to navigate. Mostly free, but site does offer a paid subscription to the Closed-end Funds Report.

ADR’s and GDR’s

Depositary Receipts are negotiable U.S. securities that generally represent a non-U.S. company's publicly traded equity. DRs trade just like any U.S. security, alleviating certain obstacles associated with investing directly in the home markets of non-U.S. companies. Many significant emerging market companies trade in the US as ADR’s.

The best sites for quotes and basic company information on ADRs are run by banks that sponsor ADR programs as depositary banks.

Bank of New York has the best ADR-specific content and the cleanest home page. The page features latest news ADR’s and ADR performance. The sites directory allows you to view many stocks on a single page, has great search tools and, even better, may be downloaded as an excel file. I use excel to sort ADRs and build my own simple stock screener, and the site offers several directory views, sorted by country, region, industry and capital raise. Another section is devoted to the BNY ADR Index, the only index to track all Depositary Receipts traded on The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), The American Stock Exchange (AMEX) and NASDAQ. If your main method of trading emerging market stocks via ADRs, this index is a must. If you own a country-specific ETF, the country-specific ADR compliments the MSCI Indices as a means to gauge performance.

JP Morgan has one of the slickest and most visually appealing sites. It covers the major stocks in the ADR Universe, provides some free ADR research and a customizable “myadr.com” login with some screening and stock watch tools. There are many “tearsheets” with company data, although they vary in quality.

Citibank ADR is primarily a marketing tool for the bank’s ADR services. There is little in the way of extras, and the home page is geared to industry pros. But search for a company and you will be rewarded with some interesting data on capital raisings, filings and news. If you are researching an ADR, we recommend that you visit both ADR and JP Morgan.

Emerging Market Mutual Funds (Open and Closed End)

Introduction to Investing in Emerging Markets by Dr. Mark Mobius One of its earliest and successful advocates. A very brief and basic article, with an emphasis on the Templeton Emerging Markets Fund managed by Mobius.

Morningstar A leader in emerging markets mutual funds research. Excellent performance data on all emerging markets funds and regional funds

Emerging Market Debt

BradyNet is the best site for those interested in emerging market debt issues. The site features macroeconomic data, bond quotes and ratings and portfolio tools. BradyNet is one of the oldest emerging markets financial sites on the web. We assume it takes its name from the Brady Bonds program begun in 1989. Brady’s transformed the sovereign debt of Mexico, Argentina and Venezuela, into tradable bonds. They are named for then US Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady.

JP Morgan EMBI JP Morgan’s Emerging Markets Bond Index Plus (EMBI+) tracks total returns for traded external debt instruments in the emerging markets. This site is essentially defunct, as Morgan apparently is only making the data available to clients at www.morganmarkets.com. You can find downloadable data and an EMBI intro in pdf form.

Feeds and Blogs

Random Roger’s Big Picture Roger Nussbaum has a genuine interest in emerging markets and attracts interesting posts from others as well.

Nouriel Roubini’s Global Economic Blog cover many economic issues that impact on emerging markets, as well as content on specific emerging markets. Roubini is a professor at New York University.

CLSA Asia Pacific Blogs CLSA, a division of Credit Agricole, does investment banking and brokerage in the Asia Pacific region. This page offers a gateway to blogs posted by their analysts. Some of them link to pdf’s of CLSA research??

ETFtrends From money manager Tom Lydon, is excellent for news and some commentary on the ETF universe.

The Unauthorized Participant is an ETF blog with some interesting posts.

Direct Investment Opportunities

FDI Xchange is a Web and e-mail based information service that provides corporate investors, advisors and financial institutions timely and specific information about new direct investment opportunities in emerging markets. Opportunities include privatizations, participation in infrastructure projects and strategic alliances. Even if you never invest in one of these private transactions, read the emails and the business and legal guides and macroeconomic data. You’ll gain valuable insights into the investment environment of the country in question.