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Global Asset Allocation, Politics & Governance, Ecstrat

John-Paul Smith

Global Asset Allocation, Politics & Governance

Ecstrat

Ecstrat is a consultancy advising on asset allocation between global equity markets, with a focus on the intersection of governments, geopolitics, governance and markets.
 
Over the past few years and more especially since the Great Financial Crisis (GFC), investors have become more focused on short-term market movements and real-time returns and have consequently neglected the analysis of the underlying structural themes that underpin longer term performance.
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More specifically we believe that the evolution of governance-based relationships between investors, controlling shareholders, labour and the state is one of the primary determinants of both relative and absolute performance between individual equity markets.
 
We will endeavour to provide investors with some of the context surrounding governance-related issues which encompass many different disciplines including history, economics and political science, as well as the financial metrics which are the most obvious manifestation of the structural characteristics of each market.
 
We will pay particular attention to the shifts and potential inflection points for governance in individual markets as these are often the best lead indicators for both economic and market performance.

Cross Asset Strategy

<p>The market reaction to President Zuma’s version of the night of the long knives has been relatively muted with the rand back close to its end 2016 level against the dollar, having merely unwound the gains of the previous few months. This says much more about the very favourable external environment for EM debt in our view, than it does about the prospects for policy-making in South Africa over the next few months. </p><p>We believe that investors are underestimating the potential for the changes in the…</p>

The market reaction to President Zuma’s version of the night of the long knives has been relatively muted with the rand back close to its end 2016 level against the dollar, having merely unwound the gains of the previous few months. This says much more about the very favourable external environment for EM debt in our view, than it does about the prospects for policy-making in South Africa over the next few months. We believe that investors are underestimating the potential for the changes in the…

South Africa: Investors Still Too Complacent About Future Policy Direction (Part 3 of 8)