"The question in emerging markets is: Is this the start of a new bull market? We have 10 reasons for being optimistic," the manager of $12 billion funds told reporters.

Mobius said the great 1997/1998 crash in emerging markets, where no index fell less than 50 per cent, was overdone and while there had already been some significant gains, these were from the absolute bottom and were far off their erstwhile highs.

"The recovery is only just beginning. Indonesia, for example, fell by 92 per cent, recovered by over 200 per cent but has over 300 per cent to go to its previous high," he said.

History showed that bull markets lasted longer than bear markets and this was especially true of emerging Asia. "You'll see that every crisis was followed by a new bull market, and each bull market reached a newhigh in dollar terms and we expect the same thing to happen," he said.

Further reasons for optimism were undervalued currencies, export competitiveness, rising forex reserves, lower interest rates, bargain valuations, increased capital flows, and ongoing economic reforms and corporate restructuring.

"We're looking for good bargains, and on a price to book value basis you can see that the developed markets -- US, Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Spain -- are all rather expensive except Japan, while the emerging markets are all cheaper," he said. Thailand, for example, now had a price/book value of two times against five times in 1994, which contrasted with the United States at five times now against 2.5 times six years ago.

"This is the reason why we tell people to be diversified." The fund manager said he did not expect a fall on Wall Street after such a dogged rally to send a shiver through investors in emerging markets.

"If there's a gradual decline, I think emerging markets would be helped becausethere would be a shift of assets -- people realise they've got to diversify globally and this is already happening now," he said.

His recommendations for prospects of substantial returns, albeit at very high risk, are Indonesia, Thailand and Brazil. A safer bet was South Africa.