The average emerging-market fund is up 22.7 percent a year, on average, for the past five years.

Last year, 21 new emerging-market funds joined the 41-fund group.

While several emerging-market funds are following the new exchange, actual participants are still rare.

Now, money is flowing in through emerging-market funds, pension funds and others.

In the second quarter, diversified emerging-market funds lost 5.1 percent.

Yet the flood of money that has already poured into emerging-market funds this year is beginning to worry some people.

The reverberation of Asia's problems into other markets around the world has made the past year exceeding difficult for investors in emerging-market funds.

For investors, emerging markets can provide eye-popping returns - as in 1993, when the average emerging-market mutual fund gained 72 percent.

Not every emerging-market fund has fared so poorly; many have been buoyed by investments in Latin America.

Rather, he said, the potential problem lies in the volatility of the huge flows of money from Western emerging-market funds.