Building, compounding & exiting

Hi Reader, As we are in the early innings of 2026, it feels like a good moment to reflect on what 2025 clarified about Southeast Asia and why the region has started to matter more in serious capital allocation conversations. Southeast Asia has been building scale, trade relevance, and institutional capability for decades, while global investors have been slow to update their allocation and valuation frameworks accordingly. That gap has now grown large enough to stop being an abstract macro...

Hey Reader, Southeast Asia just overtook China When I moved to the region a decade and a half ago, Southeast Asia was seen as an interesting side story, at best. The region had growth, but at the same time it was rarely viewed as globally significant. China dominated every macro conversation. Most investors barely even registered Southeast Asia (ASEAN) on the map. Almost 15 years later, as of early this year, the region suddenly exports more to the US than China does. Quietly, Southeast Asia...

Hey Reader, The world's most profound structural mismatch creates the greatest investment opportunity of our generation It’s been a hectic month with over 30 meetings with primarily European family offices discussing asset allocations and emerging markets. I’ve been positively surprised that there is an increasing realization that the (extreme) under-allocation to emerging market equities is neither healthy nor sustainable. With this 2nd part in this newsletter series, I want to continue the...

Hey Reader, The world's most profound structural mismatch creates the greatest investment opportunity of our generation Most sophisticated investors I know think it's madness. When I tell them that roughly 77% of my net worth is concentrated in emerging & frontier market assets, they usually respond with some version of "that seems quite risky..." or "shouldn't you have at least the majority of your portfolio in the US - everyone knows US stocks outperform everything...". They're not entirely...