Goldman Sachs’s MIST Topping BRICs as Smaller Markets Outperform

Jim O’Neill ushered in a decade-long investment boom in 2001 when he coined the term BRICs for the largest emerging markets. This year, a lesser-known acronym that the Goldman Sachs Asset Management chairman is helping to popularize has taken over for many investors.

The so-called MIST nations -- Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea and Turkey -- are the four biggest markets in the Goldman Sachs N-11 Equity Fund. Opened in February, 2011 to invest in what O’Neill considers the next big 11 emerging markets, the fund has climbed 12 percent this year, compared with a 1.5 percent gain in Goldman Sachs’s fund for Brazil, Russia, India and China.