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 Weijian Shan says that reducing the trade deficit will be more complicated than the Trump administration hopes.
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 President Trump in comments Saturday said stock-rallying reports this week that trade talks with China would include the lifting of tariffs against the world's second-largest economy weren't true. The president referred to those tariffs as "sanctions" on Saturday. "Things are going very well with China and with trade," he said to reporters. "There were some false reports about sanctions being removed. We have taken in tremendous amounts of money into the United States because of the sanctions and we'll see how it goes. And if we make a deal, certainly we wouldn't have sanctions...," he said, expressing general optimism for progress. The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter, that the idea of lifting tariffs in part or whole was proposed by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in a series of strategy meetings. The report added that U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer is concerned that any concession could be seen as a sign of weakness, however. Trade issues have been cited as the biggest headwind for stocks rallying in 2019 and the reported tariff removal pushed stock averages to session highs Thursday when the headlines hit.
Market Pulse Stories are Rapid-fire, short news bursts on stocks and markets as they move. Visit MarketWatch.com for more information on this news.
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 World stock indexes jumped on
Friday, with Wall Street posting a fourth straight week of
gains, and the dollar had its first positive week since
mid-December as optimism increased that an end is in sight to
the U.S.-China trade conflict.
Stocks w
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If you think 2018 was a rough year for American stocks, take a look overseas. Emerging markets were absolutely hammered last year.
The iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (EEM), the most widely followed proxy for emerging-markets stocks, finished 2018 down 17%. Many individual developing countries fared even worse. The Xtrackers Harvest SCI 300 China A-Shares ETF (ASHR) - which tracks the performance of China's largest domestically traded shares - lost 29% last year. The iShares MSCI Turkey ETF (TUR) shed 43%.
But as we jump into 2019, there are several reasons you might want to give EMs another look.
To start, emerging-markets stocks actually were less volatile than American stocks during the wretched final quarter of 2018. Three months isn't a long enough period to draw any firm conclusions, but it's starting to look like investors have already largely abandoned emerging markets and there's "no one left to sell." That could mean a relatively low-risk entry point for an investor looking to allocate new money to emerging markets.
Secondly - and perhaps most importantly - emerging markets also are wildly cheap relative to American stocks. Perhaps not surprisingly, the U.S. market is now one of the most expensive in the world, according to estimates by Star Capital, trading at a cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings ratio ("CAPE") of 26.8. To put that in perspective, developed markets as a whole trade at a CAPE of 22.2, while emerging markets as a group trade at a CAPE of just 14.5.
Emerging markets can be a roller-coaster ride. The booms can make you wealthy, but the busts can be devastating. So don't overload your portfolio in EM stocks. But at today's prices, it makes sense to have a little skin in the game. With that said, here are five solid emerging-markets stocks to buy in 2019.
SEE ALSO: 20 Top Stock Picks the Analysts Love for 2019
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