For long - term investors in emerging market (EM) equities, the gains made in the past two years (11.2 % in 2016 and 37.3 % in 2017 for MSCI Emerging Markets index) have felt like they were a long time coming. Between 2010 and 2015, e merging markets returned a cumulative - 22 %; it feels even worse compared to developed markets which returned 44 % over the same period - outperforming by 66% or 11% annualized.