Emerging-market stocks and currencies have taken a beating in 2015, but underperformance in these assets is hardly novel. The MSCI Emerging Market index hit its post-recession peak in 2011 and has been trounced by its developed-market counterpart since 2010:
It's easy to blame China for all the emerging-market woes, but John Paul Smith, founder of research firm Ecstrat, points to a structural reason for the underperformance of the asset class.