They Don’t Know, That They Don’t Know

The most frightening thing in the world is the lack of acknowledgment that you don’t know what you don’t know. Unfortunately, American politicians are the truest example of such folly.They are blaming the burden of high gas prices on OPEC, speculators, and big oil companies. The biggest reason people related to the oil industry are being targeted is because gasoline […]

A Summary Of Sound Practices For Hedge Fund Managers

Overview of “A Summary of Sound Practices for Hedge Fund Managers” which appeared in the Winter 2007-2008 issue of Financial Bridges magazine. View the entire article via the PDF. Overview The Managed Funds Association – a leading trade group for the hedge fund industry – recently released the fourth version of its highly regarded Sound Practices for Hedge Fund Managers […]

SEC Proposes Revisions to Regulation S-P and Expansion of Customer Privacy Requirements

On March 4, 2008, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced proposed changes to Regulation S-P (“Reg S-P”), the regulation governing the privacy and protection of customer information. A copy of the proposing release is available on the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov/rules/proposed.shtml. If adopted as proposed, the changes, designed to enhance the protection of customers’ nonpublic personal information, will undoubtedly […]

Fed Rate Cut/Fed Financing of Bear Stearns/Gold Prices

There has been a lot of panic regarding the recent reaction of gold prices and gold mining shares. First of all….Relax! It is hard to predict or trade daily price movements in any commodity or stock. The most important thing in investing is to “look through the muck” and identify important longer-term trends. Daily price movements are simply daily price […]

Taiwan Offers Value – Election Provides Catalyst

Taiwan is a significant component of the EM MSCI and has drastically underperformed the index during the greatest bull run in Emerging Markets. Why? Economic impact of the political relationship with China has affected earnings and also forced investors to price in additional risk to Taiwanese companies. Evaluate the current election result in the context of broader economic change as […]

Sell Vol at These Levels

Despite today’s fall in VIX, volatility is at 5 year highs. This is a great place to reinforce macro GEM views and seize upon either price weakness or get paid from volatility. Emerging markets – especially when analyzed across specific country lines are not a fad, or even a bubble, but a 10 year growth story. Despite what I can […]

Ethnocentric, Ecocentric or Just Right?

With the Fed having moved 75bps between meetings, targeting slowing growth(with less focus on inflation) we are going to here more and more remonstration directed at the ECB on their reluctance to cut rates, and the root of this stance. Real rates are now probably 100bps higher in Europe than they are in the US and inflation is more contained […]

GEM cellular story remains core consumer play

While the decoupling debate of emerging mkts to developed markets rages on– EM investors who are on the fence can look at the cellular sector in EM as being defensive during a period when there is a question about top down growth. Disposable income is growing in places like the , Latin America, Middle East, Russia and obviously India and […]

Trading view: Monday Feb 25th 2008

What we did learn from Friday’s silly close in the US is that hedge funds are positioned for more doom and gloom, thus we are either near a bottom (when everyone believes the market is going lower…) or someone is actually looking at the bond mkt this time for the appropriate signals on the health of the credit markets(where all […]