Invest Like The Best
Episode 75 Emerging Market Opportunities
Invest Like The Best

Episode 75: Emerging Market Opportunities

Emerging Market Opportunities

Harvey is the co-founder and lead portfolio manager at Firebird Management. We cover his experience in Russia buying privatization vouchers, today's emerging market opportunities, and the biggest mistakes investors make in emerging markets.

This episode is brought to you by:

CFA Institute. CFA Institute is the global association of investment professionals, whose mission is to lead the investment profession by promoting the highest standards of ethics, education, and professional excellence for the ultimate benefit of society. CFA Institute serves a global community of investment professionals working to build an investment industry where investor's interests come first, financial markets function at their best, and economies grow.

[00:02:26] – (First Question) – Most memorable travel experience since the beginning of Firebird

[00:05:41] – How Harvey got interested in emerging markets investing, specifically, Eastern Europe and Russia

[00:10:01] – How does the landscape for emerging markets today compare to when he first started

[00:12:29] – What are the factors of an emerging market to look at and why do some not pan out

[00:15:04] – Do countries have to meet minimum criteria before Harvey and his team will even start to do work on an emerging market

[00:17:32] – How does Harvey distinguish between frontier and emerging markets

[00:18:37] – Thoughts on the access points that regular investors have into emerging markets, such as ETF’s and Mutual Funds

[00:23:47] – How does Harvey think about risk exposure when constructing a portfolio

[00:25:56] – Looking at the bottom up part of the equation, what factors within a company or sector are considered as part of the investing decision

[00:31:05] – Dividends in emerging markets

[00:33:09] – How do US equities stack up as an investment against fixed income

[00:34:53] – The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book on Value Investing. A Book of Practical Counsel

[00:36:52] – How do US equities stack up as an investment against emerging markets

[00:39:38] – What type of investor allocate funds to emerging markets

[00:42:36] – The value of travel in understanding emerging markets

[00:47:02] – Biggest mistakes that emerging market investors make

[00:51:32] – What in today’s markets has the smell of opportunity

[00:52:36] – Harvey’s interest in Via

[00:53:42] – Interest in buying gold coins

[00:56:49] – If Harvey could only choose one country to visit, business or pleasure, where would he go

[00:57:51] – Kindest thing anyone has done for Harvey

Emerging Market Opportunities

Intro

Patrick
My guest this week is Harvey Sawikin, a co-founder and lead portfolio manager at Firebird Management, which manages funds dedicated to investing in emerging market equities. Emerging markets are often a blind spot for investors of all types. Most of us have never traveled to the far East or Eastern Europe, where many of the thousands of emerging market public equities operate. I've been very lucky to travel quite a bit in Asia and the Middle East, but never to Eastern Europe, which is where Firebird focuses its investments.

Evaluating Emerging Markets

Harvey and I discuss his 24 years of experience evaluating emerging and frontier market countries, industries, and individual stocks. We discuss his experience buying privatization vouchers in Russia, banks in the Baltics and how today's emerging market opportunity-set compares to the past. Like so many of these conversations with investors who have earned significant excess returns, it's clear investing opportunities in emerging markets are often disguised. Finding them requires risk, hard work, discipline, and a dose of luck and timing. Please enjoy my conversation with Harvey on emerging market opportunities.

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