I am reading more and more commentary that says the decoupling idea, that is that emerging markets would be immune from a recession/bear market in the US, will not pan out and that these countries will go down right along with the US.

I don’t think it is so simple as decoupling will work versus decoupling won’t work.

The equity market in China is in the middle of a decline of some magnitude. The decline plays no role in the crane count in China. The building and infrastructure modernization will continue if we do in fact have a bear market. I don’t know if this continued spending will help stocks or not but the underlying fundamentals could stay very healthy.

As we look at different countries they each have their thing (or things) that make them tick. During a US event some of these places will hold up just fine. The story in Vietnam seems like a candidate for ongoing health, a type of place I have previously described at being in its own world.

During the big bear market at the start of this decade Australia was able to pull away and recover much faster than most other markets. That is the thing to this entire issue. There will be some markets that weather a US downturn better than others. While this is obvious it is also true.

Which countries will be the ones? I mentioned Australia worked on the last go around. Norway not so much last time but if oil stays high (above $80?) it might be a candidate. Norway obviously is a surplus country.

What about another fave of mine, Iceland, which is a deficit country? A reason to think not is the extent to which its banks participate in the global financial scene. Part of the bear case now is not being able to access capital. This threatens Iceland in the short term. A reason to think yes is the move afoot to bring energy intensive manufacturing and data storage to the country to take advantage of the very cheap geothermal energy. Weighing the two I’d say it might not work out for Iceland over the next 18 months. The next 60 months is a different story.

How many countries are you willing to size up and allocate to in order to try to offset a US bear market? Buying EFA wouldn’t seem to cut it ( a point I make often).

This is a complex issue. I have exposure to many countries in client accounts, some of them will hold up better and some will not and I may not know ahead of time which will be which. Realizing ahead of time that I will get some wrong is, to me, all the more reason why I believe in using the inverse index funds to try to neutralize a big decline.

Guessing that Ghana will work, Belize won’t so I should sell (these are just examples I have no idea how to access either one) seems like a much tougher game to play than just spreading across many countries you believe to be fundamentally sound. I think in that scenario you have a chance of owning a couple of the ones that will decouple.

And there will be some that do decouple even if I don’t know which ones they will be.

Last 5 posts by Roger Nusbaum

• The Big Picture for the Week of November 15, 2009 - November 14th, 2009
• Process Drilldown - October 23rd, 2009
• Sunday Morning Coffee 10-18-09 - October 18th, 2009
• A Little Followup From This Morning - October 8th, 2009
• Wednesday Roundup - October 7th, 2009