text: Where to invest to recover from the major losses in our retirement plans since 2008? The emerging markets, if you can sleep at night, that is. The emerging markets aren’t as crazy risky as they used to be, but they are still higher beta assets than any developed market security. That means a 10% decline in the S&P 500 means around a 15% decline or more for emerging market stocks. However, the long term growth story of the big emerging markets in particular remains in tact. Despite the U.S. downgrade and European sovereign debt crisis, Brazil, Russia, India and China are set to be the drivers of global growth.