I have spent the last 25 years focusing on Asian equity markets both in a professional and personal capacity. I started my investment career at a leading hedge fund in Hong Kong and continued at funds in Hong Kong and London, all with a focus on the Asia Pacific region. From 2006 through 2010 I co-founded and co-managed my own hedge fund. All the funds I was involved with performed well, and particularly survived and thrived during bear markets, including:

• a positive return in 1997 and 1998 (Asian Financial Crisis) where the MSCI Asia index was down over 50%.
• a 15% annualised return through the 1998-2002 dotcom crash and aftermath.
• a flat return from 2006 to 2009 compared to a 40% LOSS in the MSCI Asia index.

Despite excellent relative performance, I closed my fund down in 2010 after investor redemptions, and then took some time out and focused on personal investments.

The biggest learning I have had over the years is that Macro trumps Micro. Though I am a qualified Accountant and can review balance sheets, cash flow statements etc with the best of them, this is not where I start my investment process. In my experience, you can have the cheapest stock in the world with great fundamentals, and it won’t matter if the market or sector has a negative headwind. This is particularly true in Asia where you have a number of different markets with different characteristics and drivers, and where ownership structures and cultural factors often mean that private market transactions do not rectify mispricings.

So, my starting point is a big picture/macro view of the world which gives me input for investment themes and drives my outlook for asset classes and markets. I then focus on sectors which reflect those themes and I believe will move based on my macro view. When running a fund, I would then move down to the stock level and do my fundamental research on which stocks in that sector have the best risk-adjusted leverage to that theme.

While the US is still the world’s biggest economy and exerts enormous influence on the global investing climate, my seat here in Hong Kong allows me to also view the world from the vantage point of China and the wider Asian Region, which together contain over half the world’s population and increasingly impacts macro conditions and industry competition. I spend my time reading, researching, and studying economics, politics, and businesses worldwide and, using my experience from over 25 years of macro-informed investing, digest and synthesise what I am seeing and sensing into actionable mid to long-term themes.

My commentaries will focus on tradeable macro views and themes which have a timeline of 6 months to 1 year or longer and will highlight ETFs and sometimes baskets of stocks which cover the sectors in my themes. Although there is additional alpha that can be gained by analysis at the single stock level, my belief is that 75% of performance relates to choosing the right sectors over time.

I have started this newsletter to provide investors with analysis of macro themes that can inform their own macro strategy and / or provide a backdrop for their own stock specific research. I believe that the investment world in which buying and holding the main US indexes and mega cap stocks was a one way bet is over, at least for the next decade or so. My aim is to help investors navigate the more complex era we have now entered.