Building, compounding & exiting

Hey Reader, Bad headlines and a de-risked market can be the same market at the same time. A week ago I wrote about Indonesia's threatened MSCI downgrade and the record fine on Sinar Mas linked companies. Since then the newsflow has only gotten louder. However, I think almost everyone reading it is drawing the wrong conclusion. The enforcement is real Indonesia's Financial Services Authority (OJK) has spent the last few weeks doing something it has not done consistently before: enforcing its...

Hey Reader, Indonesia's threatened MSCI downgrade is indeed a serious warning for the local stock market. First things first though: MSCI’s core stated concern was lack of meaningful enforcement. Understandable. However, the local regulator is already showing concrete signs that it is willing to enforce. On 15 October, MSCI announced a consultation on moving Indonesia from Emerging Market to Standalone Market status (which means outside both the Emerging and the Frontier market indices). As a...

Hey Reader, Southeast Asia's venture capital collapse forced its best growth companies toward profitability, and left them undervalued for whoever has the patient capital to buy. I was looking at a slide from the 10th Asia PE-VC Summit this week. Southeast Asia-focused VC funds closed 3.8 bnUSD across 21 funds in the first half of 2022. By the first half of 2026, that was 8 mUSD across a single fund. That chart reads like a shut down of an entire asset class, but what it is actually...

Hey Reader, How to not invest in Southeast Asia A field guide to the ways of getting Southeast Asia wrong, which doubles as a filter for the few who should be in it at all I am going to try to talk you out of investing in Southeast Asia. After more than fifteen years buying listed companies on the ground here, I have come to believe the fastest way to find the few investors this region rewards is to be honest about every way it punishes the rest. Southeast Asia is the best structural...

Hey Reader, The global media narrative on Indonesia and the operators on the ground in Indonesia are not describing the same country. But it's an interesting setup in Indonesia right now, where the global media narrative is that the country is close to uninvestable / completely imploded. Whereas, if you talk to the operators on the ground, the long-term growth case for Indonesia seems to not have changed much at all. What has not changed It's still a GDP per capita growth case that has many...

Hey Reader, Why listed emerging market equities belong in the private equity bucket of your portfolio Think about listed emerging market equities as a long-term investment asset class. Don't think about them as a liquid asset class where you can jump in and out, because that approach will more or less ensure that you lose money in listed emerging markets. Put them in the same bucket as private equity instead. Concentrated portfolios, long holding horizons, and actively influencing the...

Hey Reader, "Don't be a homer" has finally gone mainstream Why I keep the overwhelming majority of my net worth in emerging and frontier markets, and why the safe looking alternative is the bigger gamble Most sophisticated investors I know think I take too much risk with my own money. Roughly 77% of my net worth is concentrated in emerging and frontier markets, and when it comes up the response is almost always a version of "that seems awfully risky". They are right about the short-term...

Hey Reader, Indonesia is going through a phase of rapid and foundational stock market reform - meanwhile, investor sentiment is at an all time low Indonesia is the most interesting market in the broader Southeast Asian region today, and also the most misunderstood On January 28 and 29, 2026, the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) Composite lost roughly 84 bnUSD in market value over two trading sessions on the news that MSCI was reviewing Indonesia's emerging market classification and might...

Hey Reader, Five Southeast Asian countries are making foundational reforms to their capital markets simultaneously in 2026 - most people are missing that this is one joint regional step change While global investors are absorbed by Middle Eastern headlines, five Southeast Asian countries are quietly reshaping the foundations of how their capital markets work Most institutional investors still bundle Southeast Asia into one line item somewhere in their EM sleeve, accessed through an index fund...

Hey Reader, We were on Bloomberg's Asia Centric podcast last week for a holistic conversation with John Lee on shareholder activism in Southeast Asia (SEA).We covered a range of shareholder activism-related topics:- What collaborative activism looks like in growth markets where the toolkit is different from the one in the US or Europe- Where the most undervalued opportunities are in the region's ~3 tnUSD listed market (in fact, larger than Korea or Taiwan individually)- Now is a unique period...