Barclays GlobalAccess Emerging Market Equity Fund

The term ‘emerging markets’ refers to those regions across the world that are experiencing rapid economic growth. Examples of countries include India, China, and Brazil, which are growing faster than the economies of Western Europe, the US, and Japan.

But the 24 countries that make up the MSCI Emerging Markets Index are very different to each other, which means they each have their own appeal to investors. This makes it a daunting task to find the right fund to invest in. Here, we look at a fund that invests right across the emerging markets, and is managed by four very different investment managers.

Don't forget the risks

While emerging markets offer investors potentially attractive opportunities, it’s important to recognise the risks. We would categorise emerging market risk into three categories:

• Economic risk refers to issues such as inflation, interest rates, labour supplies, and the cost of raw materials, which can present challenges to companies and investors.
• Political risk in emerging markets may include unstable and potentially volatile governments, which can cause unforeseen problems to the economy.
• Currency risk is particularly relevant to emerging market economies because much of their trade and debt is denominated in US dollars.

These risks help us understand why investors need to strike the right balance between not taking on too much risk in order to reap the potential rewards. It’s about choosing the right fund to invest in.

What does this mean for investors?

Diversify. With such a wide variety of countries in the emerging markets, it’s important to diversify your exposure, so that if one market is struggling there is a chance that other markets could compensate. The Barclays GlobalAccess Emerging Market Equity Fund does this for you, by spreading your investment across four different investment managers. Each of the four investment managers has a unique approach to investing in emerging markets. One manager, for example, is a specialist investor in Asia, and is based in Hong Kong.

A unique approach

The Barclays GlobalAccess Emerging Market Equity Fund is unique. The fund is managed by investment professionals at Barclays, who look to utilise the skills of who they believe are some of the best fund managers in this area of the market.

By investing in four very different managers together, the aim is to deliver more consistent performance, as when one underperforms we hope that the other managers have the potential to deliver outperformance. This variety of skills and expertise is packaged together in a single product, making the GlobalAccess Emerging Market Equity Fund a unique way to invest in emerging market regions.

Long term

It’s important to remind ourselves that investing is a long-term story, and investing in emerging markets is the ultimate in long-term investing. Markets can be volatile in the short term and investors need to buckle up for far longer.

How to invest

The Barclays GlobalAccess Emerging Market Equity Fund is a fund worth considering if you’re thinking of taking a diversified approach to investing in the shares of companies in emerging markets. This fund is one of 13 Multi-Manager funds on the Barclays Funds List. Find out more information about the Multi-Manager funds as well as other funds that invest in emerging markets. Find out more information on these funds.

Correct at the time of publishing.

To diversify your investment, you may like to consider our own Barclays Ready-made Investments (RMI). The RMI are just one example of a range of diversified funds which allow you to select the level of risk you are most comfortable with. These Barclays multi-asset funds invest in passive funds across a range of asset classes and regions, offering a globally diversified solution for investors. Ready-made Investments are not the only funds that we offer and they won’t be appropriate for everyone.

Past performance of the fund and its manager are not a reliable indicator of their future performance.

We don’t offer personal investment advice so if you’re unsure you should seek that independently.

Funds are designed for the long term so you should only consider them if you can stay invested for at least five years.

These are our current opinions but the future, as ever, is uncertain and outcomes may differ.

Read the Assessment of Value report [PDF, 3.2MB] for funds run by Barclays.