Marketing Director, Asia Frontier Capital

Asia Frontier Capital

Marketing Director

Investing in high growth Asian frontier economies.

Asia Frontier Capital Ltd. is a pioneering fund management company based in Hong Kong that specializes in investing in high growth Asian frontier economies by managing the AFC Asia Frontier Fund , AFC Iraq Fund and the AFC Vietnam Fund.

The AFC Asia Frontier Fund invests in public equities of Asian frontier countries that are seeing increasing consumption due to favorable demographic trends, rising incomes and high GDP growth. The fund invests in listed equities of companies that have their principal business activities in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, Iraq, Laos, Maldives, Mongolia, Myanmar (Burma), Nepal, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. The AFC Asia Frontier Fund is positioned to take advantage of the continuing economic shifts in these countries and offers high returns combined with significant diversification opportunities. This fund is directed by the founder and CEO of Asia Frontier Capital, Thomas Hugger, who has been investing in frontier markets across Asia and Africa for more than 20 years.

The AFC Iraq Fund was launched on the 26th June 2015 and aims to achieve long-term capital appreciation for investors by capturing value and growth potential in the post conflict high-growth & resource rich Iraq market. The fund emphasises long term investment horizon to truly capture the opportunity in Iraq. The fund's investable universe consists of locally listed companies that have their principal business activities in Iraq as well as foreign listed companies that have the majority of the business in Iraq as a whole including the prosperous Kurdish Region of Iraq (KRI). The AFC Iraq Fund offers access to investments in post conflict recovery potential of Iraq, including the KRI, and/or stability in its territory. The AFC Iraq Fund is managed by Asia Frontier Capital (Iraq) Limited, Cayman Islands under the executive leadership team of Thomas Hugger (CEO & Fund Manager) and Ahmed Tabaqchali (CIO) who have more than 47 years of investment experience as well as an extensive background covering global, emerging, frontier and MENA markets.

The AFC Vietnam Fund invests exclusively in listed Vietnamese equities to capture value in growth companies with a focus on the small to medium size companies. This market segment offers a unique investment opportunity as the valuation gap between large- and small-cap stocks in Vietnam is presently much wider than in comparable neighboring markets and the valuations are significantly depressed versus their regional peers. The fund adopts a fundamental-quantitative approach and employs an in-house earnings model to identify attractive companies where we see high growth opportunities. In conjunction with targeting the maximum upside potential the portfolio has been structured to mitigate corporate government and liquidity risks. The fund invests in a diversified portfolio of 70-90 attractively valued companies to carefully control concentration risk.  This approach allows the fund to sell, or buy, positions without having a significant market impact. The fund is directed under the executive leadership of Thomas Hugger and Andreas Vogelsanger who have more than 50 years combined experience managing investments in frontier markets, Asia and around the world.

For more information about the fund, management team and investment strategy please contact us at info@asiafrontiercapital.com.

Cross Asset Strategy

<ul><li>The AFC Iraq Fund was down 0.5% in January, outperforming its benchmark, the Rabee Securities RSISX USD Index, which was down 5.0% for the month.</li><li>For the third month in a row, the decline in the parallel market’s price of the Iraqi Dinar (IQD) versus the US Dollar (USD) negatively affected the market’s performance by reversing the index’s 5.5% increase in IQD terms to a decline of 5.0% in USD terms, and the fund’s 9.0% increase in IQD terms into a 0.5% decline in USD terms.</li><li>However, unlike the prior two months, the market has started looking through and discounting the currency’s volatility as seen from the market action and, in particular, those of banks and industrial stocks – two groups that stand out as net beneficiaries of the depreciation of the market price of the IQD vs the USD.</li></ul>

The AFC Iraq Fund was down 0.5% in January, outperforming its benchmark, the Rabee Securities RSISX USD Index, which was down 5.0% for the month.For the third month in a row, the decline in the parallel market’s price of the Iraqi Dinar (IQD) versus the US Dollar (USD) negatively affected the market’s performance by reversing the index’s 5.5% increase in IQD terms to a decline of 5.0% in USD terms, and the fund’s 9.0% increase in IQD terms into a 0.5% decline in USD terms.However, unlike the prior two months, the market has started looking through and discounting the currency’s volatility as seen from the market action and, in particular, those of banks and industrial stocks – two groups that stand out as net beneficiaries of the depreciation of the market price of the IQD vs the USD.

AFC Iraq Fund January 2023 Update: "Market Begins to Discount Currency Upheavals"

<ul>
<li>2023 had a flamboyant start with European and US stock markets in positive territory.</li>
<li>Also, the VN-Index gained an impressive 10.3% in the first month of the year, mainly due to the strong performance of bank stocks.</li>
<li>The AFC Vietnam Fund unfortunately doesn’t have much exposure to banks and hence the NAV rose by only +4.1% to USD 3,004 in January, according to internal estimates. </li>
</ul>


2023 had a flamboyant start with European and US stock markets in positive territory.
Also, the VN-Index gained an impressive 10.3% in the first month of the year, mainly due to the strong performance of bank stocks.
The AFC Vietnam Fund unfortunately doesn’t have much exposure to banks and hence the NAV rose by only +4.1% to USD 3,004 in January, according to internal estimates. 


CEO, ByteTree Asset Management

ByteTree Asset Management

Specialising in Bitcoin, Gold and Digital Assets

Investment Manager specialising in bitcoin, gold and digital assets

<ul><li>With stocks up while the dollar is down, 2023 continues to surprise.</li><li>It was supposed to be the great recession, but the market says otherwise.</li><li>That is one of the confusions around gold. In this week’s Atlas Pulse, I compared the bull vs bear arguments. </li></ul>

With stocks up while the dollar is down, 2023 continues to surprise.It was supposed to be the great recession, but the market says otherwise.That is one of the confusions around gold. In this week’s Atlas Pulse, I compared the bull vs bear arguments. 

Founder, Market Thinker

Mark Tinker

Founder

Market Thinker

Mark Tinker has over 35 years experience as an investor, market strategist and economist. Having spent more than 20 years as a sell side strategist and being top rated on numerous occasions and surveys he moved to investment management in 2006 to run global equity portfolios in London and subsequently moved to Hong Kong in 2013 to help establish an Investment Management business for a top 20 international asset manager. He first started writing investment weeklies for his employers in 1989, developing a style characterised under the title Market Thinking and has been a regular commentator and presenter on CNBC, Bloomberg and other business channels, where his approach of rationalising market behaviour rather than making short term predictions on high frequency market data provides a welcome balance to his client audience.

Making Sense of the Narrative

Macroeconomics

<ul><li>The market fall this year has been steady and relentless rather than a panic crash, and last month the Sell in May mantra cut through and markets switched to bear market behaviour of selling rallies and not buying dips</li><li>Much of this we believe has been associated with leveraged structures unwinding, combined with fund redemptions, especially in tech, reversing the ‘upside crash’ of last year</li><li>Confidence is picking up slightly, but the Fed is key, in particular the extent to which it actively want the markets lower</li></ul>

The market fall this year has been steady and relentless rather than a panic crash, and last month the Sell in May mantra cut through and markets switched to bear market behaviour of selling rallies and not buying dipsMuch of this we believe has been associated with leveraged structures unwinding, combined with fund redemptions, especially in tech, reversing the ‘upside crash’ of last yearConfidence is picking up slightly, but the Fed is key, in particular the extent to which it actively want the markets lower

Macroeconomic and Investing, The Macro Compass

Alfonso Peccatiello (Alf)

Macroeconomic and Investing

The Macro Compass

Actionable investment ideas and unique global macro insights. From the desk of a former Head of $20 bn Investment Portfolio straight to your inbox.

Actionable Investment Ideas

<ul><li>Investing is all about probabilities: all you need to do is assess the chances markets are assigning to different scenarios today and anticipate how this probability distribution will move over time.</li><li>In other words, you don’t need to be necessarily right on what happens next but just be able to grasp how market consensus will move from here.</li><li>Ignoring this simple principle has been a very expensive exercise for European fixed income investors over the last few weeks: the-ECB-will-never-really-hike mantra is melting under the eyes of bond investors married to a dovish narrative which has been successful for a decade but offers a very bad risk-reward today.</li></ul>

Investing is all about probabilities: all you need to do is assess the chances markets are assigning to different scenarios today and anticipate how this probability distribution will move over time.In other words, you don’t need to be necessarily right on what happens next but just be able to grasp how market consensus will move from here.Ignoring this simple principle has been a very expensive exercise for European fixed income investors over the last few weeks: the-ECB-will-never-really-hike mantra is melting under the eyes of bond investors married to a dovish narrative which has been successful for a decade but offers a very bad risk-reward today.

The Biggest Macro Risk You Might Be Ignoring

United States

The US dollar is the official currency of the United States of America.

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AFC Iraq Fund January 2023 Update: "Market Begins to Discount Currency Upheavals"

The AFC Iraq Fund was down 0.5% in January, outperforming its benchmark, the Rabee Securities RSISX USD Index, which was down 5.0% for the month.

Asia Frontier Capital

AFC Vietnam Fund January 2023 Report

The AFC Vietnam Fund unfortunately doesn’t have much exposure to banks and hence the NAV rose by only +4.1% to USD 3,004 in January, according to...

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