Indian stocks: World's best performers

Indian stocks have emerged as the best performers among those in the emerging and the developed markets across the globe so far this year, giving investors the highest return of nearly 60 per cent.

According to an analysis by MSCI Barra Indices, a measure of returns from various stock markets across the world for foreign investors, Indian stocks have outperformed their global peers, including in the United States, the United Kingdom and China in 2009 so far.

The 133-year-old Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) is the world's number 1 exchange in terms of the number of listed companies and the world's 5th in transaction numbers. Read on. . .

Indian stocks have provided a return of 59.30 per cent year-to-date, against 34.37 per cent gains provided by MSCI Barra's emerging market index, covering all developing nations.

Indian stocks have even outperformed all the developed world markets covered by MSCI Barra, as the markets in the US and the UK gave returns of just 2.33 per cent and 10.17 per cent, respectively, so far this year.

Among the emerging BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) nations, the Brazilian market was the closest competitor with gains of 56.89 per cent till June 26 this year.

The Chinese and the Russian markets have given returns of 36.77 per cent and 41.61 per cent, respectively, in the year so far.

The 30-share benchmark index of Indian stocks, Sensex, gained over 5,000 points in the year so far to settle at 14,764.64 points on June 26 compared to 9,600 levels on December 31, 2008.

Other emerging markets which gave over 50 per cent returns so far this year include Indonesia (55.85 per cent) and Chile (51 per cent).

Analysts opined that the Indian markets have been rising on the positive global cues and got a positive spur from the decisive mandate in favour of Congress-led UPA in the general elections.

"The Indian stocks have been on a recovery path primarily in the past three months due to election results and on expectation of new government spurring the economic reforms in the country in the days to come," an analyst from a leading brokerage said.

Meanwhile, other developed markets including Canada gave 25 per cent returns, Sweden (21.42 per cent), Norway (24.70 per cent) and Japan (2.45 per cent), according to the data.

Further, Indian stocks have also performed significantly better in the past three months period up to June 26 and have given foreign investors returns of 62 per cent.

The Brazilian markets gave returns of 40 per cent, Russia 34.37 per cent and China 34.98 per cent in the three months.