Month: February 2013

Changes at the Margin – How to Prepare for a Disorderly Move

In a past life, while still in the clutches of the investment banking world, I’d made a few friends in the “trading fraternity” and visited them on a regular basis for work and social reasons. When it came to markets, opinions varied little within the group. Traders were unanimously bullish

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A Conversation with Harris Kupperman – Part Deux

We ended the last post (the first part of a discussion with Harris Kupperman – “Kuppy”) discussing Mongolia and then Cambodia. In this discussion Harris and I moved on to the state of the world economy, and Japan in particular. ——- Chris: We’re living in a very unique investing environment

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A Conversation with Harris Kupperman – Part 1

For long time readers, Harris Kupperman (Kuppy) needs no introduction. For more recent readers Harris is a friend, fellow cynic, hedge fund manager and CEO of Mongolia Growth Group (Ticker: YAK.V). Someone crazy enough (we are very grateful) to move from sunny Florida to Ulanbaatar in order to take advantage

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US Banks – An Asymmetric Trade Idea

My friend Chris Mayer makes a strong case for US banks…so much so that I’ve been thinking a little about this for my own equities portfolio. Chris writes a newsletter aptly named Capital and Crisis, which is focused on value investing. It is, as far as I can tell, exceptionally

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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

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