The intense heat burns your eyes and the fine red dust sticks to the sweat pouring out of your pores, creating a thick paste. “Maybe it’ll protect me from sunburn..?” The sun lotion I generously applied sure as Hell won’t be doing any good, having disappeared in a river of sweat ending in my socks. [...]
February 7, 2013 By 3 Comments
Seeking Safety in the Frontier
Historically, Emerging and Frontier markets may have been associated with instability, volatility and a lack of certainty. However, today many emerging economies are actually less volatile than developed ones, enjoy SUBSTANTIALLY lower levels of debt and far better fiscal accounts. In fact, although Zimbabwe recently announced it had only $217 in the government checking account, [...]
February 5, 2013 By 4 Comments
The Efficient Market Hypothesis: Misconceptions and Implications
A few months back I received an email from a reader who called me to task on my comment that the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) was complete bullshit. I was referring to the public markets in general, and the ill-conceived comment was made based on my opinion that the market is rigged, and therefore there [...]
January 22, 2013 By 1 Comment
Cambodia’s Challenge: Accessing Capital Markets
Years ago I first came across something taken completely for granted in many Asian countries…namely the practice of keeping two sets of books. Mind you this variety of accounting occurs globally, with the vast majority of the world’s companies being family run affairs, the books for the business are easily controlled, held and manipulated by [...]
January 8, 2013 By Leave a Comment
A Case for Frontier Markets
I received an early Christmas present last year. Yep, 2012 is now last year! Some time ago I had agreed to write a short chapter for a book recently published by Wiley. I had completely forgotten about it, but thankfully received some complimentary copies in the mail on Christmas eve. I’ve since been reading through [...]
December 27, 2012 By 4 Comments
The End of The World… So, Why Are We Buying NOW in Mongolia?
Waking on the morning of the 22nd of December I was startled, shocked, and horrified to find the world looking remarkably similar to the one I left the evening before. Here I was expecting a whole New World, a better world, a world without shopping malls, noisy neighbours, TV commercials, rising insurance premiums and, and, [...]
