According to Barrons and NASDAQ, Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neill has been talking about Mexico, naming it the most attractive for investment out of the world’s 11 most popular emerging markets.

“Smaller emerging markets continue to gain popularity among investors,” writes Barrons. “Mexico has outperformed previous LatAm darling Brazil, with some of the same growth prospects but a lot less fanfare.”

Mexico is performing the best out of the top four emerging markets that Jim O’Neill tapped earlier this year, displaying strong potential for continued growth. Mexico also makes up the largest component (at 24 percent) of Goldman Sachs’ N-11 equity fund (GSYAX), which is up nearly 12 percent this year, placing it in the top five percent of Morningstar’s emerging markets stocks.

Mexico also has its own exchange traded fund, the iShares MSCI Mexico Investable Market Index Fund (EWW), which functions as an index of Mexican stocks, according to NASDAQ. And the fact that its annual expenses are only .52 percent, which is less than one third of O’Neill’s GSYAX, makes this an even more attractive option for cost-conscious investors.

In addition to its close relationship with the United States, “Mexico’s orthodox economic policies have also offered some comfort,” according to Barrons, which has helped the country economically in recent years. For example, Mexico’s EWW is already up nearly 17 percent in 2012, which has helped to attract a large amount of international attention in recent months.

The latest acronym for O’Neill’s emerging market darlings is MISTs, because his GSYAX equity fund relies heavily on high performance from Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea and Turkey. Barrons is comparing the opportunities coming with O’Neill’s MISTs to the BRIC funds he popularized more than 10 years ago, which were fueled by Brazil, Russia, India and China.

According to Barrons, “emerging markets are expected to power 60 percent of the world’s economic activity by 2030 and have become synonymous with growth.”