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Emerging Market Stocks Are a Mess—Except for This Group of Outperformers

The Covid-19 crisis could mark the end of emerging markets, at least in the way that most investors think about them—as a unified asset class. These markets, disappointing even before the pandemic, are lagging behind again as Covid-19 cases surge in India and South America. The iShares MSCI Emerging Markets exchange-traded fund (ticker: EEM) underperformed in 2018 and 2019, and is down 13% so far this year, nearly double the drop of the U.S. market. It’s enough to make an investor walk away.