TheStreet Network: TheStreet | MainStreet | BankingMyWay | RealMoney

Description:

From 7-9-07:

"Two decades after Mark Mobius began preaching the attractions of emerging markets, investment in them is taking its next big leap forward. "Emerging markets then was a kind of amorphous concept, and nobody cared one way or another about the differences between the individual countries that made up the category," Mobius, a Franklin Templeton director, recalls. Today, that's different.

...Then there's the current sweet spot of the emerging-markets universe: Brazil, Russia, India and China: the "BRIC" markets...The acronym was coined in 2001 by Jim O'Neill, head of global economic research at Goldman Sachs, to describe the group of giant economies that he believed would overtake the developed markets in size and importance by the middle of the 21st century...Not surprisingly, investment firms around the world jumped aboard the BRIC bandwagon. EPFR Global, a Cambridge, Mass-based research firm, estimates that more than $13 billion is invested in the two dozen or so BRIC funds that have been launched in financial centers ranging from London and Luxembourg to Hong Kong and New York. Lately, however, investors' enthusiasm for these funds has waned...But the BRIC phenomenon appears to be far from over..."This is a 50-year theme, and we are still just at the start of that," says Gordon, who co-manages the Goldman Sachs BRIC fund (ticker: GBRAX).

Get stock quotes and business news on TheStreet