Indian equities' persistent performance

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 an asset class delivered 3.9 per cent.

Clearly, the US has been the only game in town and despite going through