Our Emerging Markets Equity CIO Manraj Sekhon provides the team’s midyear outlook, including how secular trends driving opportunities in emerging markets have accelerated because of the COVID-19 crisis.

While US-China trade issues still haven’t been resolved, there are reasons to be optimistic about the prospects for emerging markets in the coming year.

Emerging market equities were off to a strong start overall in 2019, rebounding from a 2018 downturn.

Numerous uncertainties weighed on investor sentiment in 2018 and led to a down year for emerging markets overall, although the fourth quarter saw some outperformance versus developed markets.

Emerging markets continued to struggle in October amid an environment of heightened equity-market volatility globally. Manraj Sekhon, CIO of Franklin Templeton Emerging Markets Equity, and Chetan Sehgal, senior managing director and director of portfolio management, believe the pullback presents long-term investors with opportunities amid what they dub an overreaction. They present the team’s overview of the emerging-markets universe in October.

July marked the first month of the calendar year where emerging markets posted positive performance overall, with frontier markets leading the way.