By Andrew Pitts | 25 September 2017

Follow the money: it’s a phrase that applies not only to investigative pursuits but also to investing. So is the ‘smart money’ suggesting that private investors should be tilting their portfolios towards emerging markets? Last month I suggested that on relative valuation grounds, emerging markets were attractive, and I highlighted a trio of Money Observer Rated Funds making the running in Asia, emerging Europe and the wider emerging markets universe.

Institutional investors are sniffing out bargains too. More than $90 billion has been ploughed into emerging market equity funds this year, according to funds monitor EPFR Global. Private equity inflows into emerging markets, too, are at their highest since comparable records began in 2008. The Emerging Markets Private Equity Association states that $22 billion (£16 billion) was ploughed into the asset class in the first half of the year.