Entry Point

You may remember The Lens was looking forward to the CAMRADATA Emerging Markets Seminar. We are happy to report all went well and that our main take-away from it was right now is the best entry point to emerging market assets that investors have had in 16 years.

This was the view of Jan Dehn, the head of research at emerging markets specialist Ashmore. If you are unfamiliar with Dr Dehn, then you should check out his weekly reports on emerging markets over at Ashmoregroup.com. The Lens can report his public speaking is as punchy as his writing.

Of course, it’s easy to suspect that fund manager’s talk up their asset class, but we need to temper that scepticism with the possible fact that those who are closest to some particular part of the market are best placed to comment on it.

Dr Dehn and other very high quality speakers (Dehn was a tough act to follow but Nick Samouihan of T Rowe Price managed it) convinced The Lens that sellers have been little more than panic-stricken. Whenever uncertainty arises, emerging market assets are the first to be hammered. Right now that uncertainty is to do with trade wars, a strong dollar, and rates moving upwards. But emerging markets have recovered from geo-political storms many times, and evidence shows that previous rate hikes benefited these markets because of their greater growth potential compared to the developed world.

These were some of the other headline observations that caught the Lens’s attention, so if you don’t mind we’ll keep the blog short this week, as we’ve an entry point to catch.