(MONEY Magazine) – Adios, Emerging Markets. Hello, Junk Bonds. It took a market crisis that spread from Asia to Latin America to dethrone them, but emerging markets bond funds do not have a single entry on our one-year winners list for the first time since March 1996. The new kings of the bond fund world: high-yield (a.k.a. junk bond) portfolios, with a 13.5% return for the 12 months to Dec. 1. Moving into the numero uno slot for one-year returns is $121 million Dreyfus High-Yield Securities, with a 19.6% gain. Meanwhile, $63 million Phoenix Emerging Markets, which had topped the charts with a 36.5% profit for the year to Oct. 1, has fallen back to earth with a 12.1% advance.

[Text not available--table ranking Top-performing taxable funds (sales load) for one year, three years, five years, ten years, and ten biggest funds (ranked by size); table ranking Top-performers by one-year return (% sales load) in the following categories: U.S. government, investment-grade corporate, high-yield corporate, mortgage-backed, world-income, and tax-exempt]