There’s a classic scene in the 1976 hit movie, The Marathon Man, in which Laurence Olivier, playing a skilled dentist who is also a Nazi war criminal, is torturing a young Dustin Hoffman. Using his medical know-how and some frightening looking dental tools, Olivier is attempting to extract from Hoffman the answer to a simple question: “Is it Safe?” Hoffman’s response is to scream repeatedly and then collapse from exhaustion.

Though perhaps not quite as extreme, a somewhat similar scenario is taking shape with regards to the investment outlook for Emerging Markets. While there has certainly been a broad based recovery across Emerging Markets both in fixed income and equity, there is still no agreement among analysts as to whether the volatility and accompanying precipitous price drops of the last year are behind us. As a result, most Emerging Market institutional investors are also asking the same question: “Is it safe”?

So is it?

The answer, it seems, depends on whether you are a Corporate or a fund manager.

As a Corporate looking at Emerging Markets from a Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) point of view, managers appear to have returned to a ‘full-steam-ahead’ strategy with regards to EM investment – they clearly believe that EM, as opposed to the G5, is the place to be. Look no further than the flurry of media reports released during President Obama’s current trip to Moscow: it seems like one Fortune 500 corporate after another is announcing their big time bets on Russia as their hot new market for the next decade (despite the collapse in oil prices and perceptions around corruption).