What is an "emerging market fund"?
An emerging market fund is a mutual fund that invests in stocks from emerging markets. Usually we're talking about countries now. Argentina, Brazil, parts of Asia, just countries that are just starting to emerge. And the, the idea behind that is one, that they're, since they're younger countries, they have a great potential for growth. So there's a high expected return on those stocks. There's also a lot of volatility, a lot of risk, political risk of the countries and those types of things. And then lastly, a reason why you might consider emerging markets as part of your overall portfolio is that the, the economic factors that affect the United States or other developed countries as in Europe don't affect emerging markets the same way. So there can be a diversification value in having emerging markets as part of an overall sound investment strategy.