Ten years ago, the world relied on G7 countries to provide world growth but that changed to a point where the world turns to China for most of its growth. China is one of four developing countries with high growth potential with Brazil, India and Russia. They are now known to all as the BRIC countries and while they are very different, they all share a story of stunning growth that has brought them among the economic powers of the world. Think it’s by chance that 3 of the recent&upcoming Olympic games will be held in these countries? Socchi (Russia) and Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) are anxious to show off to the world and match China’s impressive performance in hosting the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Who belongs in BRIC?

It’s always interesting to see analysts discuss if a country or another does not belong in the group because of specific problems. For Russia, reasons often discussed are its reliance on commodities and its aging population part of a bigger demographic problem. India also often needs to defend its membership in the select group. India is perhaps not yet at the level of the 3 others in terms of income and GDP but it’s potential is certainly comparable to China’s because its demography.

So I thought I would take a look to compare ETF’s for the BRIC countries to those from one of the four specific countries.

So let’s start with China ETF’s

Brazil

India

Russia

One very surprising fact in my opinion is that I’ve read in many places that investing in a BRIC index ETF was not a good idea because you would be stuck with the two underperformers, Russia and India. Turns out that their 1 year returns are 147.70% (RSX) and 142.97% (INP) which is much higher than the main ETF’s from China and Brazil.

Conclusion

What I think should be drawn is that all four of these countries are very interesting investments and personally I would much prefer investing in a BRIC index than trying to choose the individual country. The margin for error is simply much smaller. So without waiting, here are the main BRIC ETF’s.