It's Not Just One Big Emerging Market

Many investors have gotten used to lumping the world's emerging markets into one big asset class.

But in the past year, the drama in Turkey, Venezuela, Argentina, Russia, Indonesia, India, China... all of these countries have had unique local stories that made it very clear that the emerging markets should not be considered as one big thing.

"Amid the pervasive bearishness about developing economies, the term "emerging markets" has never been more unhelpful and misleading," said Nicholas Spiro last month. "Differentiation remains the watchword, and it's time the term "emerging markets" was jettisoned."

Above is a chart from Citi's global economics team that breaks the emerging markets into five regions. While these regions may also be too broad and general, we at least begin to see the how different the growth stories have been.