of iShares Blog

Emerging markets under-performance so far this year hasnt spread to the frontier.

While emerging market equities have under-performed developed world stocks recently, equities in pre-emerging, or frontier, markets have actually outperformed both their developed and emerging world counterparts.

But its not too late to explore the frontier. Here are three reasons why investors should consider having a small strategic allocation to equities in the pre-emerging world.

Valuations: Despite their outperformance, frontier markets still appear to be good bargains. According to my teams research, frontier markets, as represented by the MSCI Frontier Markets 100 Index, were recently trading at a price-to-book ratio of around 1.2, below the 1.6 ratio of the MSCI Emerging Markets Index. And while firms in frontier markets are less profitable than emerging market companies, frontier stocks look inexpensive even when this difference in profitability is accounted for.

Growth: Frontier valuations also look attractive considering that I expect these markets to experience faster growth in coming years than many emerging and developed world countries.

Diversification: Finally, companies in frontier markets tend to just focus on demand in their local countries and thus are less tied to the global economy than emerging markets like China and Brazil. As my colleagues Del Stafford and Daniel Morillo pointed out last fall in blog posts, this means frontier markets have exhibited a low correlation to emerging and developed markets and can add some diversification to a portfolio.

Though a growing number of funds are providing access to frontier markets, its important to remember that frontier countries generally have less established equity markets, and more regulatory and political unknowns than markets elsewhere in the world. In other words investing in them can be risky.

That said, frontier markets are a strategic asset class, along with US equities, bonds and gold, that investors want to consider always having a little of in a portfolio. Assuming that frontier markets will likely decrease in risk as they develop over the long term current valuations present a potential buying opportunity. Frontier markets are accessible through the iShares MSCI Frontier 100 ETF (FM).

Sources: BlackRock Investment Strategy Group research, Bloomberg

Russ Koesterich, CFA, is the iShares Global Chief Investment Strategist and a regular contributor to the iShares Blog. You can find more of his posts here.

The author is long FM

In addition to the normal risks associated with investing, international investments may involve risk of capital loss from unfavorable fluctuation in currency values, from differences in generally accepted accounting principles or from economic or political instability in other nations. Frontier markets involve heightened risks related to the same factors and may be subject to a greater risk of loss than investments in more developed and emerging markets. Diversification may not protect against market risk or loss of principal.