For most of the world’s major equity bourses, 2013 has been a good year. However, few markets can hold a candle to Venezuela.
As of Tuesday, Venezuelan stocks were up an astounding 466% in local currency (bolivar) terms. Even when adjusting that number into dollar terms, it was still 287%. Alas, there is no Venezuela ETF and that might be a good thing given the country’s penchant for currency devaluations and hyper-inflation.
There are, however, plenty of single-country ETFs with which to track some of this year’s top-performing global markets.
Some notes about the following list. First, data applicable to the local benchmarks is in local currency terms and comes by way of Bespoke Investment Group. The data were posted on Nov. 12. Second, there will be discrepancies between local market and ETF returns because the following ETFs are not benchmarked to the primary indices in the countries the ETFs track.
Third, some markets in the top-10 were excluded because there is no applicable country-specific fund. For example, stocks in the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, and Kuwait rank among the world’s 10-best performers, but there are no single-country ETFs for those nations. Investors can access those countries through diversified regional and frontier market funds. [Frontier Markets ETFs Could Soon be Buys]
Finally, a standard S&P 500 ETF is the choice for U.S. stocks. Without further ado, here is the list of the 10 best global equity markets to this point in 2013 represented by single-country ETFs.