Swing trading using pairs, Emerging versus Frontier Markets

A recent Wall Street Journal article, Saturday/Sunday February 1-2, 2014,tracked the relative performance of ETF’s representing emerging markets and even less developed economies referred to as ‘frontier markets’. The article points out that the frontier markets have seen a ‘steady trickle of investment from fund managers hoping to ride years of steady growth’.

I have used the ETF IEMG to represent emerging markets and the ETF FM to represent frontier markets.

Since the end of 2013, IEMG is down almost eight per-cent while FM has flat performance. The U.S. market as represented by SPY is down a little more than five per-cent.

As a portfolio manager who is looking to diversify into less developed emerging markets, a look at the relative strengths of IEMG versus FM would be of some value.

The following graph illustrates this point.

 

Pairs IEMG-FM 1-31-