Category: Frontier Markets

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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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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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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IPO’s, Liquidity, Bonds and Banking in Mongolia

Given our bullishness on Mongolia and our trusted relationship with Eric Zurrin from Rescap Securities, we wanted to reach out and get Eric’s current thoughts on the Mongolian equity market, liquidity, banking and upcoming deal flow. Pertinent to this post was something that happened after our interview with Eric. Mongolia’s

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How to Invest in Frontier Markets

Investing in frontier markets is a challenge due to lack of liquidity and significant set-up times. One way to circumvent these problems is to Invest in other people’s expertise through a managed fund. We work hard to associate ourselves with smart individuals where we can reciprocate value. This not only

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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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