The overlap in the constituent parts of Asia Pacific ex Japan and emerging market investment strategies is such that they react similarly to macro and economic influences.
One distinction – and a measure of success in the past decade – is whether or not any Asian/emerging market country is a net importer and driver of commodity prices or not.
This changed as commodity prices started to fall and, looking at the MSCI indices, Asia Pacific ex Japan started to move away in performance terms from its emerging market peers in early 2012.
So three years later, have Asian equities as an investment case finally separated from emerging markets or is the former still a proxy for the latter?
