Emerging market stocks in bear territory after 20 percent drop since January | Reuters

Emerging market stocks in bear territory after 20 percent drop since January | Reuters:

A leading emerging market stock index extended its slump since January to 20 percent on Wednesday in a fresh wave of selling which took it into territory commonly regarded as a bear market.

The scale of the fall in MSCI’s widely tracked 24-country emerging market index .MSCIEF is likely to be painful for many investors, given the index compiler estimates that more than $1.9 trillion of assets globally are benchmarked to the measure.

The sharp drop in the index comes as the threat of a full-blown trade war between China and the United States has scuttled Chinese markets. Political stress has brought heavy losses in countries like Brazil, Turkey and Argentina, while a strong dollar - partly due to rising U.S. interest rates - has hit virtually anyone who borrows in the currency.