2009 Country Performance: BRIC Countries All in the Black

Below we highlight the year to date equity market performance of 84 countries. The unweighted average return of all 84 countries is -6.04%. Twenty-one countries are up year to date, while 62 are down.

One positive that can be drawn from this table is that all four BRIC countries are now in the black for 2009. These countries were the leaders during the last bull market, and they have also been some of the biggest decliners during the bear. The fact that these key countries are now trending upward is a sign that global investors are beginning to take more risk. China is up the most of all countries at 29.71%, while Russia is up 19.11%, Brazil is up 12.13%, and India is up 3.69%.

Unfortunately, all of the G-7 countries are still in the red year to date. Canada has been the best among them, while Italy has been the worst. With a decline of 9.11% year to date, the US is performing slightly worse than the unweighted average of all countries.