Youthful populations and the move of workers from rural areas to higher-income jobs in the cities are supercharging growth in these economies. About 65 percent of workers in frontier markets live in rural areas and their movement to urban centers is boosting earnings and productivity. The median age of many of these countries is at the demographic sweet spot of 25 years, compared to 35 years in China and South Korea, and 45 years in Germany and Japan.

This explains the optimism driving families to open their first bank account and purchase new houses, washing machines, refrigerators, cars and better food and medical care. This, in turn, explains why big companies from Japan, China, the U.S., Europe and South Korea are falling over themselves and each other to invest in frontier Asia.

It’s not just lucrative new consumer markets and rising tourism that’s driving this wave of capital, but also the need to access the region’s ample natural resources.

Evidence of this optimism and virtuous cycle of growth is everywhere. Since 2009 and the cooling of its civil war, Sri Lanka’s GDP has surged 40 percent and is now double that of India on a per capita basis. The 12th-largest shopping mall in the world is in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and a $20 billion energy investment by Exxon Mobil in Papua New Guinea has the potential to double the size of its economy.

Having a slice of frontier Asia in your portfolio actually reduces risk and volatility: These markets beat to their own drummer rather than just going up and down with world stock markets like most asset classes.  Frontier Asian markets move with the MSCI world index only 35 percent of the time compared to 91 percent for the MSCI Emerging Market Index.

But like maneuvering a motorbike in and out of chaotic traffic, investing in these frontier markets requires experience and steady hands ,so choose your investments carefully. 

For example, some of you might have already invested in a frontier market ETF with disappointing results. The Guggenheim frontier ETF (FRN) is down 5.8 percent over the last year due to 64 percent of its basket invested in Chile, Columbia, Egypt and Peru. The iShares Frontier ETF (FM) is down 11.8 percent over the last year with 26 percent exposure to Kuwait, 11.6 percent to Argentina and 11.4 percent to Nigeria. The problem is that these ETFs are slanted towards commodity countries rather than the export- and consumer-based frontier Asian countries.

The best way to capture these markets is to focus in on Asian frontier markets. One option is the Asia Frontier Fund (www.asiafrontiercapital.com).

I like this fund for several reasons.

First, 46 percent of its portfolio is in consumer stocks aiming to capture the young and rising consumer class.