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Last week's asset sell-off in emerging markets is a far cry from their boom years of the past decade. But it is not an indication of a full-blown crisis, and investors should hold their nerve, writes Barry J Whyte.

An exchange office in Istanbul: the Turkish central bank raised interest rates this week to shore up the lira. Picture: Getty

Any time that countries are sort of, not completely arbitrarily, but over-clustered together, usually mistakes are made, Michael Hasenstab of Franklin Templeton told this newspaper last month.

He was referring to his firm's massive investment in Ireland, when the economy was ''lumped together with that horrible acronym - the PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain), but the point also applies to last week's fluctuations in emerging markets.

With a myriad of confusing ...