As recently reported by The Wall Street Journal, Pakistan and some other frontier markets are among the worlds’ best performing stock markets thus far this year. As the article notes:

“…if you were one of the legions of Wall Street Kool-Aid drinking emerging-markets speculators who bought into the promise of BRICs–Brazil, Russia, India and China–you would have lost a lot of money in the market thus far this year.

Instead, the only booming stock markets are those in the most emerging of emerging markets: Pakistan, Peru, and Chile. Those stocks markets have risen, respectively, 9.5%, 7.1%, and 6.6% this year, according to data provided to Deal Journal by FactSet Research Systems. Taiwan, it should be noted, posted a 7.5% rise for the first quarter.

As for the BRICs? Brazil is down 11%, Russia is down 13%, China is down 26% and India is down 40%. Overall, the average for all world markets this year to date is a loss of 11%, which makes the U.S., what, an outperformer with its decline of 9%.

Other risers include Thailand at 3% and Mexico at 1.5%; the biggest decliner after India is Turkey, down 35% since the year started….”