Insights

Dear Clients, A question I’m asked increasingly often is whether we see any real risk of increased sovereign defaults on the near-term horizon.  Much of what underlies the query rests on the now well-known precept that debt moratoria are often just as politically motivated as they are about Read Entire Entry

Dear Clients, During client calls and sometimes in conversation about the influence of political risk on investments, I’m asked about the real or measurable impact of adverse effects of politically motivated actions.  Not the esoteric stuff of the ‘talking head’ crowd about, say, the Read Entire Entry

Dear Clients, The distinction between political risk in developed versus emerging or frontier markets began to blur some two decades ago (arguably with 9-11) and has become even less marked over the past decade with such events as the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump in the US.  As Read Entire Entry

Dear Clients, At PRS – and especially so in the ICRG – we are constantly looking at geopolitical risk from a range of perspectives, quantifying the impact of key events, and delineating emerging trends. Our methodology compels us to appreciate and to convey to our clients how our risk metrics Read Entire Entry

Dear Clients, As I suggested several months ago in a previous client letter, it wouldn’t be too long before inflationary concerns took hold in much of the public and professional discourse given rising treasury yields, questionable equity valuations, and the trajectory of various asset classes, Read Entire Entry

Dear Clients, A good deal of the talk over the past month has centered on the risk of higher inflation and its impact on parts of the emerging market asset class.  The basic idea is that rising US Treasury yields of late reflect looming inflation expectations, which at one level suggests the Read Entire Entry

Dear Clients, Over the past decade, it’s been commonplace among those in the investment and multilateral communities to regard the traditional distinction between developed and emerging markets as irrelevant to modern, commercial times. Unlike the 80s and 90s when the balance sheets of many Read Entire Entry

Dear Clients, Apart from some very impressive market gains, we’ve come to the close of a year that has been loathed almost universally and which has wrought countless sufferings on millions worldwide.  We are cautiously optimistic that 2021 will be a better year. But as we’ve seen in the US Read Entire Entry

Dear Clients, The release of some positive news on the vaccine front in November was especially constructive for the emerging and frontier markets in our ICRG coverage. Given concerns among many about the feasibility of storing the vaccines developed by Pfizer and Moderna (which require extremely Read Entire Entry

Dear Clients, The breadth of the global pandemic has widened in recent weeks with countries such as France and Germany imposing fairly strict new national lockdowns. The spread is occurring in other parts of the continent, with the EU and its neighbors (more…) Read Entire Entry