For the first three quarters of 2015, emerging market currencies have depreciated compared to the U.S. dollar—some much more significantly than others. At the worst end of the spectrum, the Brazilian real lost approximately one-third of its value measured against the U.S. dollar, and on the other end of the spectrum, the Chinese yuan—a currency often remarked upon for the lack of a market-determined exchange rate—even lost a few percentage points of its value against the dollar.

Along with search for income growth opportunities while global growth is scarce, there is a broader and long-term thematic focus on quality investing and the “quality” factor in both the academic and investment worlds. WisdomTree has been leading this charge with a family of Indexes that cover the major regions and include selection factors designed to pick dividend-paying stocks with quality and growth characteristics.

We’ve written a lot recently about what it means to focus on quality in equity investments. The third quarter of 2015—with the volatility that it brought along with it—provided what we think was an interesting short period to illustrate the benefits of a quality approach.

At WisdomTree, we introduced in 2009 the concept of currency-hedged equities to the exchange-traded fund structure—a concept that caught fire subsequent to the introduction of Abenomics in Japan in late 2012. Since then, similar excitement has taken hold of eurozone equities and is beginning to take hold more broadly in developed international equities.

At WisdomTree, we have written extensively regarding how the movement of currencies can have the potential to impact equity investments. Within emerging markets, the approach of currency hedging, which has become quite popular within developed markets, is currently expensive.