The forces. Not the headlines.
Analysis and commentary on markets, companies, and the forces that move them.
Emerging-Market Debt: The Overlooked Asset Class
Emerging market government debt is one of the largest and most-underappreciated asset classes globally. Understanding the specific structure and characteristics reveals substantial diversification opportunities.
LatAm Currencies and Emerging-Market Risk
Latin American currency movements often dominate the aggregate returns of Latin American equity investments. Understanding the specific dynamics is essential to any coherent view.
ASEAN: The Underrated Growth Belt
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations comprises some of the fastest-growing economies in the world. Understanding the specific dynamics of these markets is essential to any coherent view of global growth.
Middle East: Sovereign Wealth and Hydrocarbon Wealth
Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds are becoming increasingly important actors in global markets. Understanding the specific structure and objectives of these funds is essential to reading modern capital flow patterns.
Brazil: Commodity Cycle and Real Yields
Brazilian equity performance is dominated by two overlapping cycles — commodities and real interest rates. Understanding both is essential to reading the market coherently.
Mexico: Nearshoring and the Manufacturing Rebound
Mexico's manufacturing sector has been transformed by the nearshoring trend — the reorganisation of global supply chains toward geographic proximity to end markets. Understanding the pattern is essential to any coherent view of Latin American markets.
Korea: Chaebol Discount and Value Up Program
Korean equities have historically traded at a persistent discount to comparable Asian markets. The 'Value Up' corporate governance program launched in 2024 is the most-significant policy attempt in decades to close the gap.
South Africa's JSE and Its Dual Economy
The Johannesburg Stock Exchange blends globally exposed conglomerates with domestic cyclicals, creating a market that often trades independently of its own economy.
Taiwan: The TSMC Concentration Problem
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company represents roughly a third of the TWII index by itself. This concentration is the defining feature of the Taiwan equity market — both its opportunity and its risk.
Australia's Market: Banks, Miners and Super Flows
How compulsory pension savings, bank concentration and iron ore exposure combine to make the Australian equity market unlike its economy.
India: Demographics, Domestic Flows, and Nifty
The Indian equity market has been transformed over the past decade by a specific structural change: the emergence of large-scale domestic investor participation that has fundamentally altered the market's liquidity profile.
The UK Market: FTSE 100's Global Revenue Base
The FTSE 100 is often called 'the UK market,' but roughly three-quarters of its aggregate revenue comes from outside the UK. Reading it as a domestic bet is the most common mistake in analysing it.
Europe: The DAX, ECB, and Structural Growth Gap
European equities have lagged US equities for two decades. The reasons run deeper than earnings — they touch demographics, energy policy, and the structure of the ECB itself.
Japan: TOPIX Reflation and the End of ZIRP
After two decades of near-zero rates, Japan is normalising monetary policy while corporate reform quietly transforms the equity market. The two shifts explain most of TOPIX's return this decade.
The Gap Between Global Market Weights and What Investors Actually Hold
The distribution of world equity market value is a verifiable fact. What most investors actually hold sits a long way from it, and the direction of the gap is the same in nearly every country.
The Long-Run Record Outside the United States
United States equities delivered among the strongest returns of any major market across the past century. Using that record to infer the long-run characteristics of markets generally runs into several structural problems.
How Currency Eats or Amplifies Foreign Returns
The return on a foreign asset has two components: what the asset did, and what its currency did against the investor's own. The second is frequently large enough to dominate the result.
The Blurring Line Between Developed and Emerging Markets
The developed and emerging classification directs trillions in allocation. The gap between the criteria behind it and present reality has widened across the past two decades.
Japan: Thirty Years and Governance Reform
Japanese equities spent three decades below their nineteen eighty-nine peak. Among the changes of recent years, corporate governance reform is one of the few with a structural character.
Where the European Discount Comes From
European equities have long traded at lower valuation multiples than United States equities, and the gap widened across the past two decades. Part of it is structural and part is arithmetic arising from composition.
Taiwan: Market Concentration and Global Linkage
Taiwan's weight in global equity market value is modest while its sector concentration ranks among the highest of any major market. That structure determines its volatility characteristics and what it moves with.
The Korea Discount: Governance and Structure
Korean equities have long traded below markets at comparable levels of economic development, a phenomenon with its own name. Its causes have been widely studied, and most explanations point towards governance and ownership structure.
India: Scale, Valuation and Access
India's weight in global indices rose substantially over the past decade. Its scale, valuation levels and the conditions facing foreign investors form a set of interrelated characteristics.
The Investability Question in China
A clear gap exists between the size of China's economy and the weight its equities carry in global indices. The gap arises from a set of technical and institutional conditions, and understanding them is more useful than assessing any single event.