Year: 2013

Ladies and Gentleman – Grab your “Coats”

That I had to be educated as to who Coats Inc are is a shameful disgrace… But then I’m used to being ashamed and disgraced, I like tomato and peanut butter sandwiches, and THAT my lovely wife tells me is shameful, AND a disgrace.  So who is Coats Inc.? A

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Cambodia’s Silk Trade – Opportunity Knocking…

Sometimes you get lucky and stumble upon great people and companies by accident. I sure did during my first weeks in Cambodia. Walking along the Riverside (the neighborhood I call home) I strolled into a silk garment shop to check out their local wares. The General Manager, Laurence Karatau and

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Viet Nam or Cambodia?

As I look out my broken and dusty bus window, wiping the dirty sweat from my brow I am enamored by the rice paddies and beautiful countryside. Suddenly we come to an abrupt stop and I’m relieved of my calm introspection. It’s time to enter “No Man’s land”, that bureaucratic

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Mongolia: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back?

Given our bullish stance on Mongolia, which seems to conflict with much coming out of the mainstream press these days, I figured it prudent to reach out to our on-the-ground contacts, mainly self-appointed news mogul “Mogi” Munkhdul Badral, whom some of you had the pleasure of meeting whilst in Mongolia

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Libya, Frontier Markets FX and “Streaming” Agriculture

We’ve written a bit herein about our friend and colleague, Kevin Virgil. Kevin is a West Point graduate, veteran of the US military and a true boots-on-the-ground frontier markets investor. He’s also a damn nice guy! You can get a bit more background by reviewing our posts: Libya – The

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007 Just Sent Me This…

One of the most valuable outcomes of running this site has been the people that we’ve met via or as a result of it. I recall a distant time when the people surrounding me were mostly pathologically boring, ignorant of the fact and even less interested in changing it. We

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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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