Building, compounding & exiting

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...

Hi Reader, The average equity investor earned ~17% in 2024. The S&P 500 returned ~25%. That is a difference of >800 basis points, the second-largest in a decade, according to DALBAR's 2025 QAIB report. The average investor does stay invested for 20 years. They just made terrible timing decisions around when to go in and out of the market along the way. DALBAR's "Guess Right" ratio fell to 25% in 2024 - i.e. investors timed their moves correctly only one quarter of the time, tying a record...

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...