What part of the world or what country region do you think is doing best economically? Each day it seems as though there is a downward spiral or crisis going on somewhere. From what I can tell, it looks like Asian markets have the upper hand right now.
In Europe, Denmark and Sweden have the highest GDP per person. Their unemployment rates are on par with Romania and the Czech Republic, who each have the GDP per person at the lower end of the scale. I wonder what is responsible for the difference?
Some Asian countries are always doing well, mainly because the population is growing and foreign companies are investing into those countries both for their own manufacturing as well as for providing new services. North America isn't doing so bad either, though you have to be slightly worried about the next year or two in Canada as they already had some budget difficulties and now the price of oil has plummeted. In the long run though, Canada will do just fine.
I think the oil-rich countries in the Middle East [Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait] should be doing the best economically regardless of oil prices. While they still have a lot of oil to sell, they'll keep doing much better economically than all other nations.
Having your economy rely on one single resource is just NOT healthy. It's the same with investing, only an idiot would build a super long term portfolio by using ONLY one company's stock and no other instruments. For example, if oil would stabilise into the $50 range (where it is now but in my opinion it won't stabilise there in the long term.) most of the countries you mentioned would be in HUGE trouble.
Probably India relatively at the moment, it's not as good as china, but not really showing any signs of slowing down, the cheap oil is helping a lot too.
For the next 5 years, China. For the next 50 years.. USA. China is going to hit a wall very soon similar to what the USA hit in the 1950s and Japan hit in the early 1990s. At some point China is going to develop a real middle class, and those middle class people are going to start demanding social programs and environmental protection and all of the society changes that are necessary for a 1st world lifestyle. In the 1980s, everyone was so afraid of Japan beating us.. but then they developed a middle class, and next thing you know their costs of business rose to equal our, true competition arose, and Japan had a recession. The same thing is goign to happen to China in 5-10 years. Right now they are beating us because they abuse labor and poor workers and they abuse their environment... the growing middle class will put an end to that soon and then they will have to compete with us equally.. China right now is exactly the same as Japan in the mid 1980s.
Selectively, parts of Asia I think. They have decent growth stories and their balance sheets are still in decent shape. Obviously, there is still contagion risk from Europe but a lot of Asia's trade is intra-region so it should be fairly sustainable.
Some are predicting a crisis for China before long. I've made tons of money there, but I've also lost thousands on a couple of companies who were cooking the books. You've always got to be careful with foreign countries and governments. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...ncrease-in-debt-is-massive-and-unsustainable/ The best thing to do when looking for opportunities abroad is to diversify - not too much in any one region or country. Foreign and emerging markets can bring great ROI, but there are always risks - politcal, economic, etc.
