The Best Emerging-Markets Stocks for 2019

If you think 2018 was a rough year for American stocks, take a look overseas. Emerging markets were absolutely hammered last year.

The iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (EEM), the most widely followed proxy for emerging-markets stocks, finished 2018 down 17%. Many individual developing countries fared even worse. The Xtrackers Harvest SCI 300 China A-Shares ETF (ASHR) - which tracks the performance of China's largest domestically traded shares - lost 29% last year. The iShares MSCI Turkey ETF (TUR) shed 43%.

But as we jump into 2019, there are several reasons you might want to give EMs another look.

To start, emerging-markets stocks actually were less volatile than American stocks during the wretched final quarter of 2018. Three months isn't a long enough period to draw any firm conclusions, but it's starting to look like investors have already largely abandoned emerging markets and there's "no one left to sell." That could mean