The Annual Returns For Each Emerging Market Since 2004

No two emerging market economies are the same. Each country has varying growth prospects and risk profiles.

Each country also has the potential to surprise in various ways.

So, when investing in emerging markets, the best move may be to buy a portfolio of countries rather than pick the one you think will be the winner.

The folks at US Funds put together this "periodic table" of emerging markets, which ranks the annual stock market returns of various developing economies.

"Emerging markets, like all investments, can have wide price fluctuations over time," they write. "This table shows the ebb and flow of emerging market countries over the past decade and illustrates the principal of mean reversion - the concept that returns eventually move back toward their mean or average."