Outside of the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HoSE) in District 1, HCM City (Photo: VNA)

CNBC asked the analysts of Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Asset Management which Southeast Asian markets were their top picks, and received Indonesia, Singapore and Vietnam as the answer.

Desmond Loh, a portfolio manager at JPMorgan Asset Management, described Vietnam as a “star performer in the past few years” in economic resiliency and growth. Vietnam is one of the few economies globally to have seen positive economic growth throughout the pandemic, he added.

“To capitalise on the growth, we are positioned in high quality consumer proxies and banks,” he said, without naming specific stocks.

Earlier, in the one-page preview of his forthcoming book, the Time Travelling Economist, Charlie Robertson explains why Vietnam ticks every box required to escape poverty, reach middle income status and converge towards developed market wealth levels.

Why is Vietnam so favoured by global investors, that it accounts for 25 per cent of all the global money invested in Frontier equities, when Vietnam is just one (5 per cent) out of 22 countries in the MSCI Frontier index? The economist mentioned Vietnam’s investment in education, the country’s leadership and its success in reaping the benefits of the demographic dividend.