Cris Sholto Heaton’s recent article on investing in the small Asian countries outside China and India brings a welcome change to the usual run-of-the-mill emerging markets coverage.

You can read the whole story here.

I’ve long been a big proponent of investing in so-called Asian frontier countries. As Cris points out, “These smaller countries complement China and India. They should benefit from the rise of their larger neighbors and the region as a whole, while offering exposure to different themes and sectors.”

In fact, when I talked to Franklin Templeton’s outgoing emerging market fund manager Mark Mobius earlier this year, he was in the process of putting more of his own personal money into these miniature high-growth markets (you can read that story here, but you’ll need to have access to Index Publications’ subscription-only monthly ETFR publication).

Cris highlights

Today we are featuring top-performing "Growth/Income" equity mutual funds, which put equal emphasis on capital growth and current income.

Investors can find such funds by checking out the entire list of the Zacks #1 Rank Growth/Income Equity Funds.

3 Solid Samples

Rydex Strengthening Dollar 2x Strategy A (RYSDX) seeks to provide investment results that match 200% of the performance of the U.S. Dollar Index on a daily basis. It is a non-diversified enhanced index fund.

The fund primarily invests in derivative instruments such as index swaps, futures contracts and options on securities and futures contracts. It may suit investors who have a short-term market view and seek to benefit from shifts in value of the U.S. dollar.

Unit holders have to make a minimum initial investment of $2,500 to enter this Zacks#1 Rank ("Strong Buy") fund. It distributes dividends and capital gains, if any, annually.

SunAmerica Focused Fixed

Our issue is how to reconcile the opposite views of experts in the bond world versus experts in the stock world.  The market is always full of opposing views.  One stock guy predicts UP and the other predicts DOWN.  However, when the bond guys and the stock guys disagree, that is a more fundamental problem for us.

We have a tendency to think of bond guys as more detailed and more fundamental in their thinking and process than stock guys, so maybe a bit more right.  That could be entirely wrong and unfair, but one thing is sure — they can’t both be right if they predict opposite outcomes, unless the are predicting based on different time frames — then they can both be right.

Anyway, this is the kind of headlines day that makes us want to toss our hands in the air and go fishing.

First you see this:

July 13 (Bloomberg)