I have to confess that before I tallied the results this week, I approached the task with an awful sense of dread. Everywhere you turn the news grows worse by the day. The U.S. economy is now being compared with the Great Depression. That’s depressing.

News about sinking markets in Asia didn’t help either. The ALL ORDINARIES IDX (ASX: ^AORD) Australia, the SSE Composite Index (Shanghai: 000001.SS) Shanghai and the ISHARES MSCI THAILAN (NYSEArca: THD) Thailand indices have been some of our best performers.

And even though I monitor the Taipan Emerging Market Index on a regular basis, the volatility of the global markets lately has been ferocious. You can check it in the morning and then at the close of the day, and any rational person could easily believe that the world had gone stark, raving mad in just a few short hours.

Well, call me lucky if you want, but the Taipan Emerging Market index closed out the day with a gain of 5%.

True enough the major markets in the U.S. closed up yesterday. The Dow rose 0.73%, the S&P 500 gain 0.70% and Nasdaq was up 1.03%. Still, even if you ad together those increases the Taipan Emerging Market index clearly did better than all of them combined.

Once again, our biggest winner this week was ISHARES MSCI THAILAN (NYSEArca: THD) Thailand. To find out why, please check out the Friday Snapshot of 6/27. A lot of Western manufacturing companies are moving into Thailand — including some who now believe that China it too expensive to meet their needs.

Well, this certainly is a terrific Friday, and tonight I’ll raise a brew for all of us. Have a great weekend.

–Irwin Greenstein

With the markets getting crushed, it should come as no surprise that our Taipan Emerging Market index gets caught in the down draft. For the week ending 6/27/08, the index dropped 30.7%.

Key
ALL ORDINARIES IDX (ASX: ^AORD) Australia
BSE SENSEX (Bombay: ^BSESN) India
IBOVESPA SAO PAULO (^BVSP) Brazil
EGYPT CMA GENL INDX (Cairo: ^CCSI) Egypt
HANG SENG INDEX (HKSE: ^HSI) Hong Kong
COMPOSITE INDEX (Jakarta: ^JKSE) Jakarta
COMPOSITE INDEX (Kuala Lumpur: ^KLSE) Kuala Lumpar
KOSPI Composite Index (KSE: ^KS11) South Korea
MERVAL BUENOS AIRES (Buenos Aires: ^MERV) Argentina
IPC (Mexico: ^MXX) Mexico
NZX 50 INDEX GROSS (NZSE: ^NZ50) New Zealand
IGBM (Madrid: ^SMSI) Spain
TEL-AV TASE-100 IND (^TA100) Israel
TSEC weighted index (Taiwan: ^TWII) Taiwan
SSE Composite Index (Shanghai: 000001.SS) Shanghai
iShares MSCI South Africa Index (EZA) South Africa
RTSI INDEX (RUS: RTS.RS) Russia
ISHARES MSCI THAILAN (NYSEArca: THD) Thailand
iShares MSCI Turkey Invest Mkt Index (TUR) Turkey

The herd mentality of the major trading centers will usually prevail — regardless of the potential of individual emerging markets. You can see this with oil’s new highs triggering another sell-off. Yesterday, the Dow hit a two-year low. Citibank now seems like it will crumble and those reverberations are felt everywhere.

There is a bright spot, however…

Our biggest winner this week is the ISHARES MSCI THAILAN (NYSEArca: THD). This follows our trend for the past three weeks of Asian markets dominating the index.

Thailand has been on a tear of late. More and more major corporations are setting up factories there as China becomes too expensive.

Since January of this year, new manufacturing plants in Thailand have been announced by the likes of Japanese food giant, Ajinomoto Co.; the UK-based Plastics Capital; Toyota is building a new 150,000-square-foot diesel engine plant; Canon is doubling capacity for a printer plant outside of Hanoi; and Hanesbrands, the underwear maker, is setting up two new factories in Vietnam.

At the same time, Vietnam’s inflation hit 25.2% last month — one of the highest in our index.

Here’s my point: Vietnam has pretty much the same story to tell as other markets in our index. Some have higher inflation than others. Some haul in money from feeding the global commodity boom instead of manufacturing things. Yet, they are all dragged down by the horrible and terrifying stories making headlines in the U.S. and other industrialized countries.

All I could say at this point is that you have to wait this out. Is this a good time to double down? Very possible. Regardless, the long-term prospects of emerging markets remains quite strong.

Have a great weekend.

–Irwin Greenstein