저자: MarkMobius · 외국인
요약 보기
신흥시장은 과거 대비 중요성이 커졌지만 지수 중심 투자는 한계가 있으며, 능동적 운용과 장기 낙관론이 핵심이라는 주장. 신흥시장 정의: 세계은행 기준 저소득·중진국을 신흥국으로 분류한 것이 출발이며, 한국·대만처럼 고소득국으로 졸업한 나라 처리가 모호하다고 설명. 기업 측면: S&P500 기업 중 상당수가 신흥시장에서 매출 50% 이상을 올리고 있어 기업 분류 기준도 바뀌고 있다고 언급. 성과 논쟁: 최근 10년간 MSCI 신흥국 지수가 S&P500에 뒤처졌지만, 이는 지수 구성의 문제이며 지수 추종 투자 방식의 오류를 지적. 투자 조언: ETF를 일부 보유하는 것은 괜찮으나 지수를 따르지 않는 능동 운용 펀드를 고려하라고 권고. 강세·약세장 관점: 템플턴의 '세상은 낙관주의자의 것'이라는 철학을 인용하며, 약세장은 보통 1~2년으로 짧고 장기적으로 시장은 상승한다고 강조. 출연자 관련 맥락: 발표는 두바이 로타리 클럽 행사 내용이며 특정 종목 매수·매도 지시는 없음. 장기 견해만 있고 1~3개월 단기 예측은 없음.
다듬은 글
Hello everybody, this is David Gibson Moore, the president of the Rotary Cosmopolitan Dubai Club. We recently had the greatest pleasure of having Mark Mobius as our most esteemed guest speaker at one of our fellowship meetings. This was truly a most memorable experience, especially for anyone like myself who has spent their career in finance.
Mark Mobius has been a permanent point of reference, and his name has been at the forefront of global investment thinking for well over 40 years. He is considered by many as the founder of the emerging market asset class, and he has a reputation as one of the most successful and influential managers over the last 30 years. He launched Mobius Capital Partners, which uses a highly specialized active management approach with an emphasis on improving governance standards in emerging and frontier market economies. Mark had so many interesting observations during our 30-minute discussion.
One of the first key questions he commented on was: what is the difference between a developed and an emerging market, and how can we distinguish between them? The definitions are indeed sometimes blurred. How do you define the difference between emerging markets and developed markets? That's a really good question.
When we started the emerging markets fund, we have to thank multilateral institutions like the World Bank and the IFC, because they realized that in order for countries to grow, you need a market economy. Of course, as you know, China has adopted that concept too. More importantly, they decided to start a fund that would invest in what was then called the Third World, the poorer countries, or the underdeveloped countries. One member of the IFC, Antoine van Agtmael, a good friend of mine, was in the shower one day and thought, why do we call them poor? Why don't we call them emerging countries? That's how the idea of an emerging country came about.
The next question was how to define an emerging country. They went to the World Bank's list of low, middle, and high income countries, and selected all the low and middle income countries based on per capita income. Those included all of Latin America, all of Africa, and all of Asia except Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. At that time, Eastern European countries had not opened up, Russia had not opened up, and China had not opened up either. So that was the area we could invest in. When we started the fund, only three or four of these countries were open. I could invest in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, and Mexico, and that was it. All the other countries did not welcome foreign investment. Then we started the work of opening up these countries.
The question now is what an emerging market is. The problem with defining it is that some of these countries have graduated to high income status, like Korea and Taiwan, so how do you count them in the emerging markets index? Another problem is that, as a result of growing wealth in emerging countries, companies that would normally have sold their products and services mainly in Europe and America now sell them in China, India, Africa, Latin America, and so forth. If you look at the S&P 500 and ask what percentage of their earnings come from emerging markets, you'll find many of them have over 50% of their earnings in emerging market countries. So we've decided to define these companies as emerging market companies. The picture is changing very rapidly.
The case for investing in emerging markets usually focuses on factors such as economic growth, attractive valuations, favorable demographics, and the emerging consumer. However, emerging market stock performance has lagged behind developed markets for a number of years. It was therefore very interesting to hear Mark's observations on the future investment perspectives for emerging markets. Having developed this very positive view, when you actually look at performance, emerging markets have underperformed developed market indices over two decades.
As we all know from studying finance, if you want to maximize your portfolio's advantage, you should invest in assets that are not correlated. The other aspect is that emerging markets have been gradually developing positive correlations with domestic markets. I don't know how you analyze that in your own investment thinking.
Yes, the story of emerging market underperformance is based on the indices, the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, the S&P 500, and so forth. Over the last 10 years or so, the MSCI Emerging Markets Index has underperformed the S&P. But as I pointed out, what is the S&P? What kind of companies are in it? These are emerging market companies performing well because of their sales in emerging markets. That's why this whole trend of looking at indices is very faulty. One of the big mistakes I believe investors are making today is putting too much emphasis on the index. ETFs, exchange traded funds, are by and large based on indices. You buy an emerging markets ETF, it's based on the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, and so on. What I'm advising people is that it's okay to have some ETFs in your portfolio, but you should look at active managers, people who manage actively and don't just follow the index. One of the reasons I branched off on my own with my partner Carlos Hardenberg three years ago was to do exactly that: to have an active fund that does not follow any index, because that's what I believe can get the best returns.
During Mark's career, especially in the early stages, momentous change was taking place: the recovery in Japan, China, and, as a result of the great Asian financial crisis of 1997, a major shift across the region.
Major political and economic events produce challenging times for any fund manager, and Mark had some very interesting observations on how to navigate these twists and turns. He saw some momentous events. The Cultural Revolution was just next door when he was in Hong Kong. He saw Japan rise from the devastation of the Second World War to a developed economy, the resurgence of China under Deng Xiaoping, and he was in Asia during the Asian financial crisis of 1997. How did these events impact his philosophy as a portfolio manager?
One thing he learned from John Templeton was that the world belongs to optimists. He always wondered about that, because he thought, wait a minute, we're having these bear markets and people are losing money. Why is John Templeton so optimistic? Then he started looking at these markets and realized that over the long term, markets go up. Bear markets are very short, usually lasting one, at most two years, and then bull markets begin again. He came to understand that Templeton's optimism was a very logical and objective decision. If you are an investor, you have to be optimistic over the long term, because if you pick the right stocks, they will keep going up over the long term. That was one of the big eye-openers of his career.
All of us at Rotary Cosmopolitan Dubai thank Mark for an incredibly interesting evening. His comments were followed by a lengthy question and answer session, where he was kind enough to elaborate on a number of additional issues. We firmly hope to invite him to future events to learn more of his incredible wisdom and investment experience. Thank you indeed, Mark Mobius.
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