The MSCI emerging markets index, covering the bigger emerging markets, has over the past few months functioned as a more volatile version of the S&P 500, and is now slightly down for the year. But this is in part because emerging markets investors have instead been looking for returns in even more exotic locales. Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh stock exchange is still up 51 per cent for the year, according to Bloomberg data, having tripled in little more than a year.