Investor Education
Emerging Markets: A Growing Set of Opportunities
Emerging Markets: A Growing Set of Opportunities
With growth portfolios becoming increasingly focused on China, investors may develop a tendency to overlook the broader emerging markets universe.
To shed a light on some lesser-known opportunities, this infographic from BlackRock explores the evolving landscapes of Southeast Asia, Brazil, and India.
Putting Opportunity Into Perspective
Emerging markets often exhibit lower price/earnings ratios (P/E) when compared to developed markets. While this may suggest that the region is attractively priced, investors can also view emerging markets from a relative size perspective.
Here’s how the market capitalisations of several emerging markets compare to some of the biggest names in tech.
Country | Total Country Market Cap (USD) | Comparable to | Company Market Cap (USD) |
---|---|---|---|
India | $2,111B | Apple | $1,981B |
Brazil | $711B | $746B | |
Thailand | $428B | Tesla | $401B |
Indonesia | $381B | Nvidia | $334B |
Philippines | $270B | Netflix | $221B |
As of September 2020. Source: CEIC, Ycharts
Investors often focus on tech companies when seeking long-term growth, but with valuations at their highest levels since the dot-com bubble, uncertainty could begin to rise.
That’s where emerging markets can come into play. A country such as Brazil, which contains over 400 listed companies, may offer enhanced returns and diversification when compared to a single company. To learn more, here’s a closer look at three emerging markets opportunities that might be flying under your radar.
1. Southeast Asia: A Rising Digital Economy
Southeast Asia (SEA), which includes Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, is quickly emerging as the next digital giant. The region is currently home to an online population of 400 million people, a 53% increase from 2015.
With so many people going online, companies such as Grab, a local ride-share provider, have accumulated millions of new users. This spells good news for investors, with SEA’s internet economy expected to reach a gross merchandise value (GMV) of $309B by 2025.
Year | SEA Internet Economy GMV* (USD) |
---|---|
2015 | $32B |
2019 | $100B |
2020 projected | $105B |
2025 projected | $309B |
*GMV is the total value of merchandise sold through a customer-to-customer exchange site.
Source: Google, Temasek, Bain & Company
Favourable demographics are also contributing to this growth. The region is expecting 50 million entrants to its middle class by 2022 and has an average age of just 30.2 years. That’s roughly 10 years younger than the UK, and 18 years younger than Japan.
Furthermore, this growing cohort of wealthier consumers is already embracing technology. Ecommerce, a subsector of SEA’s internet economy, has added 100 million new users over the past 5 years, with GMV increasing from $5 billion in 2015 to $62 billion in 2020.
2. Brazil: Improvements in Gender Diversity
Gender diversity has been a historical weak point for Brazilian companies, but female representation in the country has been improving. Here’s how the percentage of women on corporate boards differs between Brazil, emerging markets, and developed markets.
Year | Brazil (n=53) | MSCI Emerging Markets Index (n=1,323) | MSCI World Index (n=1,584) |
---|---|---|---|
2016 | 5.8% | 9.0% | 20.3% |
2017 | 8.4% | 10.2% | 20.4% |
2018 | 8.0% | 11.2% | 21.6% |
2019 | 11.9% | 12.1% | 25.0% |
2020 | 13.7% | 13.0% | 26.2% |
Source: MSCI
Brazil surpassed the emerging markets average in 2020 thanks to increased awareness and initiatives by its financial sector. Brazil’s B3 exchange, for example, was the first stock exchange in the Americas to sign the Women’s Empowerment Principles, an initiative by UN Women.
Greater female representation is welcome news for both investors and society alike. Research from the Boston Consulting Group found that companies with above-average diversity tended to be more innovative, generating a greater share of revenue from recently launched products.
3. India: Promising Opportunities in Healthcare and Real Estate
As part of its National Health Protection Scheme, India’s government is looking to provide 500 million people with government-sponsored health insurance. If progress is kept on track, health sector revenues could increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18%, making it one of the world’s fastest growing markets in the world.
Year | Revenue from India's Healthcare Sector (USD) |
---|---|
2016 | $140B |
2017 | $160B |
2020 Projected | $280B |
2022 Projected | $372B |
Source: IBEF
Achieving this goal will require participation from both the public and private sectors. For example, India’s government has pledged to increase public health spending from 1.1% of GDP in 2018, to 2.5% by 2025. Additionally, it allows 100% foreign direct investment (FDI) in projects such as hospitals.
India is adopting a similar strategy for real estate, which has struggled to keep up with growing demand. In India’s top eight cities, the housing deficit amounts to over 3 million units.
Income Group | Demand | Supply | Deficit |
Lower income | 1,982,000 | 25,000 | 1,957,000 |
Middle income | 1,457,000 | 647,000 | 810,000 |
High income | 717,000 | 351,000 | 366,000 |
Total | 4,156,000 | 1,023,000 | 3,133,000 |
Source: IBEF
To accelerate development, India’s government has allowed 100% FDI in residential and retail developments since 2018. Analysts believe that the country’s real estate market could become the third largest in the world by 2030.
There’s More Than Meets The Eye
Over the span of a few years, China has grown to comprise nearly 40% of the MSCI Emerging Markets Index—but this doesn’t mean that China should receive all of the attention from investors.
With almost 30 countries to explore, China and the opportunities discussed above are just a subset of what emerging markets have to offer. For growth-minded investors, giving this diverse region a closer look could be rewarding.
Technology
Thematic Investing: 3 Key Trends in Cybersecurity
Cyberattacks are becoming more frequent and sophisticated. Here’s what investors need to know about the future of cybersecurity.


Thematic Investing: 3 Key Trends in Cybersecurity
In 2020, the global cost of cybercrime was estimated to be around $945 billion, according to McAfee.
It’s likely even higher today, as multiple sources have recorded an increase in the frequency and sophistication of cyberattacks during the pandemic.
In this infographic from Global X ETFs, we highlight three major trends that are shaping the future of the cybersecurity industry that investors need to know.
Trend 1: Increasing Costs
Research from IBM determined that the average data breach cost businesses $4.2 million in 2021, up from $3.6 million in 2017. The following table breaks this figure into four components:
Cost Component | Value ($) |
---|---|
Cost of lost business | $1.6M |
Detection and escalation | $1.2M |
Post breach response | $1.1M |
Notification | $0.3M |
Total | $4.2M |
The greatest cost of a data breach is lost business, which results from system downtimes, reputational losses, and lost customers. Second is detection and escalation, including investigative activities, audit services, and communications to stakeholders.
Post breach response includes costs such as legal expenditures, issuing new accounts or credit cards (in the case of financial institutions), and other monitoring services. Lastly, notification refers to the cost of notifying regulators, stakeholders, and other third parties.
To stay ahead of these rising costs, businesses are placing more emphasis on cybersecurity. For example, Microsoft announced in September 2021 that it would quadruple its cybersecurity investments to $20 billion over the next five years.
Trend 2: Remote Work Opens New Vulnerabilities
According to IBM, companies that rely more on remote work experience greater losses from data breaches. For companies where 81 to 100% of employees were remote, the average cost of a data breach was $5.5 million (2021). This dropped to $3.7 million for companies that had under 10% of employees working from home.
A major reason for this gap is that work-from-home setups are typically less secure. Phishing attacks surged in 2021, taking advantage of the fact that many employees access corporate systems through their personal devices.
Type of Attack | Number of attacks in 2020 | Number of attacks in 2021 | Growth (%) |
---|---|---|---|
Spam phishing | 1.5M | 10.1M | +573% |
Credential phishing | 5.5M | 6.2M | +13% |
As detected by Trend Micro’s Cloud App Security.
Spam phishing refers to “fake” emails that trick users by impersonating company management. They can include malicious links that download ransomware onto the users device. Credential phishing is similar in concept, though the goal is to steal a person’s account credentials.
A tactic you may have seen before is the Amazon scam, where senders impersonate Amazon and convince users to update their payment methods. This strategy could also be used to gain access to a company’s internal systems.
Trend 3: AI Can Reduce the Cost of a Data Breach
AI-based cybersecurity can detect and respond to cyberattacks without any human intervention. When fully deployed, IBM measured a 20% reduction in the time it takes to identify and contain a breach. It also resulted in cost savings upwards of 60%.
A prominent user of AI-based cybersecurity is Google, which uses machine learning to detect phishing attacks within Gmail.
Machine learning helps Gmail block spam and phishing messages from showing up in your inbox with over 99.9% accuracy. This is huge, given that 50-70% of messages that Gmail receives are spam.
– Andy Wen, Google
As cybercrime escalates, Acumen Research and Consulting believes the market for AI-based security solutions will reach $134 billion by 2030, up from $15 billion in 2021.
Introducing the Global X Cybersecurity ETF
The Global X Cybersecurity ETF (Ticker: BUG) seeks to provide investment results that correspond generally to the price and yield performance, before fees and expenses, of the Indxx Cybersecurity Index. See below for industry and country-level breakdowns, as of June 2022.
Sector (By security type) | Weight |
---|---|
Cloud | 28.0% |
Network | 25.1% |
Identity | 17.7% |
Internet | 15.0% |
Endpoint | 12.8% |
Country | Weight |
---|---|
🇺🇸 U.S. | 71.6% |
🇮🇱 Israel | 13.2% |
🇬🇧 UK | 8.2% |
🇯🇵 Japan | 5.5% |
🇰🇷 South Korea | 0.9% |
🇨🇦 Canada | 0.6% |
Totals may not equal 100% due to rounding.
Investors can use this passively managed solution to gain exposure to the rising adoption of cybersecurity technologies.

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Investor Education
Countries with the Highest Default Risk in 2022
In this infographic, we examine new data that ranks the top 25 countries by their default risk.

Countries with the Highest Default Risk in 2022
In May 2022, the South Asian nation of Sri Lanka defaulted on its debt for the first time. The country’s government was given a 30-day grace period to cover $78 million in unpaid interest, but ultimately failed to pay.
Not only does this impact Sri Lanka’s economic future, but it also raises an important question: which other countries are at risk of default?
To find out, we’ve used data from Bloomberg to rank the countries with the highest default risk.
The Sovereign Debt Vulnerability Ranking
Bloomberg’s Sovereign Debt Vulnerability Ranking is a composite measure of a country’s default risk. It’s based on four underlying metrics:
- Government bond yields (the weighted-average yield of the country’s dollar bonds)
- 5-year credit default swap (CDS) spread
- Interest expense as a percentage of GDP
- Government debt as a percentage of GDP
To better understand this ranking, let’s focus on Ukraine and El Salvador as examples.
Country | Rank | Government Bond Yield (%) | 5Y CDS Spread | Interest Expense (% of GDP) | Government Debt (% of GDP) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
🇸🇻 El Salvador | 1 | 31.8% | 3,376 bps (33.76%) | 4.9% | 82.6% |
🇺🇦 Ukraine | 8 | 60.4% | 10,856 bps (100.85%) | 2.9% | 49% |
1 basis point (bps) = 0.01%
Why are Ukraine’s Bond Yields so High?
Ukraine has high default risk due to its ongoing conflict with Russia. To understand why, consider a scenario where Russia was to assume control of the country. If this happened, it’s possible that Ukraine’s existing debt obligations will never be repaid.
That scenario has prompted a sell-off of Ukrainian government bonds, pushing their value down to nearly 30 cents on the dollar. This means that a bond with face value of $100 could be purchased for $30.
Because yields move in the opposite direction of price, the average yield on these bonds has climbed to a very high 60.4%. As a point of comparison, the yield on a U.S. 10-year government bond is currently 2.9%.
What is a CDS Spread?
Credit default swaps (CDS) are a type of derivative (financial contract) that provides a lender with insurance in the event of a default. The seller of the CDS represents a third party between the lender (investors) and borrower (in this case, governments).
In exchange for receiving coverage, the buyer of a CDS pays a fee known as the spread, which is expressed in basis points (bps). If a CDS has a spread of 300 bps (3%), this means that to insure $100 in debt, the investor must pay $3 per year.
Applying this to Ukraine’s 5-year CDS spread of 10,856 bps (108.56%), an investor would need to pay $108.56 each year to insure $100 in debt. This suggests that the market has very little faith in Ukraine’s ability to avoid default.
Why is El Salvador Ranked Higher?
Despite having lower values in the two metrics discussed above, El Salvador ranks higher than Ukraine because of its larger interest expense and total government debt.
According to the data above, El Salvador has annual interest payments equal to 4.9% of its GDP, which is relatively high. Comparing to the U.S. once more, America’s federal interest costs amounted to 1.6% of GDP in 2020.
When totaled, El Salvador’s outstanding debts are equal to 82.6% of GDP. This is considered high by historical standards, but today it’s actually quite normal.
The next date to watch will be January 2023, as this is when the country’s $800 million sovereign bond reaches maturity. Recent research suggests that if El Salvador were to default, it would experience significant, yet temporary, negative effects.
Another Hot Topic for El Salvador: Bitcoin
In September 2021, El Salvador became the first country in the world to adopt bitcoin as legal tender. This means that Bitcoin is recognized by law as a means to settle debts and other obligations.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) criticized this decision in early 2022, urging the country to revoke legal tender status. In hindsight, these warnings were wise, as Bitcoin’s value has fallen by 56% year-to-date.
While this isn’t directly related to El Salvador’s default risk, it does open potential avenues for relief. For instance, large players in the crypto space may be willing to assist the government to keep the concept of “nation-state bitcoin adoption” alive.
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