BRICs Priced for Economic Meltdown

The biggest emerging markets are contributing more than ever to the global economy as their proportion of the world stock market shrinks, leaving investors with the widest valuation gap in seven years.

Brazil, Russia, India and China, known as the BRICs, will comprise 20 percent of the world economy this year after growing more than four-fold in the past decade, International Monetary Fund data show. At the same time, their combined stock-market value has dropped to a three-year low of 16 percent of the total invested in equities, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.