As you can see, based on the composite rank, Russia is the cheapest country, followed by Turkey, Korea, Brazil, China and Austria. The most expensive countries are Mexico, Switzerland, US, Sweden, Canada and Malaysia.
At first blush, it might seem that Emerging Markets are relatively inexpensive, and therefore represent a good place to allocate capital. The truth is, value is only to be had in certain of the EM countries. In fact, 5 of the 10 most expensive country markets are EM countries (Mexico, Malaysia, India, Chile and South Africa).
So, in answer to the question posed at the beginning of the commentary, a value investor should consider looking at single-country ETFs that invest in Russia, Turkey, Korea, Brazil, China and Austria.
The next installment in our series will look at ideas for building a portfolio of high momentum countries. That list will look quite a bit different than this one.
Accuvest Global Advisors, a California based RIA and sub-advisor of the AdvisorShares Accuvest Global Opportunities ETF (ACCU) and the AdvisorShares Accuvest Global Long Short ETF (AGLS), shares their thoughts on relative attractiveness of different country stock markets.