Peru, king of the world.

Wow, the peruvian stock market earned 182% during 2006, that's amazing.

The Sunday Times December 24, 2006

Peru races to top of world stock market league
Paul Durman

THE populous and fast-growing Bric economies — Brazil, Russia, India and China — produced the four best performances among major stock markets last year, according to an annual review by Thomson Financial.

The analysis by the financial-information firm underlines the growing importance of these emerging economic powerhouses to investors as well as to trading partners.

*
China was the best-performing major market, the Shenzhen A-share index delivering total returns of 101.7% last year for a dollar investor. The Russian market rose by 65.8%, the Brazilian market by 40.9% and the Indian market by 36.6%.

All these figures are calculated to include dividends and were calculated in dollars — thus neutralising currency changes.

The much larger British and American stock markets also performed well last year, but trailed far behind the Bric markets. In dollar terms, the FTSE 100 delivered a total return of 26.3%, making it the 56th best- performing market among the 93 tracked by Thomson. The 14% gain in the S&P 500, the broader American index, ranked 84th.

Some smaller stock markets did even better than China. Peru was the best performer, producing a 182% gain on the back of its metals industry. Cyprus was next with returns of 157%.

The worst performers included several Middle East stock markets, hurt by the bursting of the oil bubble. Investors in Jordan were the worst hit, suffering losses of 34%. Kuwait, Lebanon, Turkey and Bangladesh also produced negative returns.

In the UK, the best-performing company in the FTSE All-Share was Manganese Bronze, the black-cab maker that gave investors a total return of 290%. There were also stellar performances from UK Coal (returns of 201%), software group Aveva (158%) and Nord Anglia Education (141%).

The worst performers are a group of companies that generated a great many column inches. Isoft, the software company that nearly went bust after failing to meet its commitment to the NHS IT programme, was the worst performer, showing a loss of 85.9%.

Party Gaming, the online gaming giant damaged by new American restrictions, ended the year down 76.9%. Acambis, the biotech company that recently lost its contract to make smallpox vaccine for the US government, and Skye Pharma, the subject of a shareholder revolt, also halved in value.

Among the larger companies, the mining groups Xstrata and Lonmin headed the list of FTSE 100 gainers, producing returns of 107.9% and 92.6% respectively. Then came Corus, the steel maker that is the subject of a takeover battle.

Carnival, the cruise operator, was by far the worst performer in the FTSE 100, costing its investors losses of 23.5%. Drugs giant Glaxo Smith Kline was next worst, down 6.3%.

Many of the winning companies reflected the strength of the utilities and construction and materials sectors. The laggards were technology, healthcare and automobiles.

This has also been a boom year for flotations on AIM, although many debutantes performed poorly for their investors. According to Thomson, the worst were Atelis, Microfuze International, Arthro Kinetics, Netservices and Chariot (UK), which all lost at least 70% of their value.

By contrast, Worthington Nicholls, Tasty, Lipoxen Technologies and iX Europe all at least doubled in value.

To put these returns on equities in context, Thomson looked at data from asset classes. Government bonds, as measured by the JP Morgan index, produced returns of 8%. Corporate bonds, a substantially riskier class of assets, did not fare much better, returning 9.7%. The returns on cash were 4.5%. Property was the star performer, the global real-estate market showing gains of 40%.