Category: Emerging Markets

How Traffic Jams Can Lead Us to Profit

The evolution of the Western shopper is well documented… Gone are the small local outlets from which our previous generation shopped. Modern adolescents now spend their waking hours roving shopping malls while glued to smart phones. I wrote an article on the topic of virtual crack a while back, it

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Investing in White Gold!

China circa 2008… six babies die from severe kidney damage while another 300,000 suffer kidney stones. As it turns out, melamine isn’t meant to be in infant milk formula! The result was a few Chinese businessmen taken out back and shot, literally… and a nation that, for good reason, doesn’t

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No More “Happy Dancing Road”

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

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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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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

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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.

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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, 

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Heads up Cowboys!

Agriculture, it’s a sector Mark and I are unashamedly bullish on. Government stupidity, central bank money printing, political over-reach and the fact that we all have to eat; these are things we are confident will continue! Capitalizing on our thesis should be easy enough, however the biggest problem we’ve encountered

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