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By Chris at www.CapitalistExploits.at
If you were rich, successful, and intelligent – which often, not always, go hand in hand together – where would you live?
The last time I was in the Rockies, I remember thinking to myself. You know what, if it weren’t for the fact it’s so damn far from the beach I could actually live here. It’s really quite lovely. Bite-your-hand-to-stop-you-from-crying-out-loud-lovely and if, like me, you’re a sucker for snowboarding, then it’s pretty hard to be disappointed.
After having just spent a few days of pure bliss (uninterrupted sunshine with zero wind) skiing on this baby in New Zealand, I can certainly appreciate living in Vail.

Maybe that’s why Julian

By Chris at www.CapitalistExploits.at
Last week I jumped on a call with an old friend Thomas Hugger who I hadn’t spoken with in months.
I recorded the call for your enjoyment but first a quick bit of background to Thomas.
Thomas is a Swiss fund manager living and working in Asian frontier markets such as Vietnam, Bangladesh, and Cambodia, which is a bit like taking a Rolls Royce through the Gobi desert if you think about it. The Swiss after all are everything that frontier markets are not: on time, reliable, consistent… maybe even boring.
The truth is, Thomas has managed to keep all the good Swiss attributes while remaining sane in environments which others would not. He is a veteran of frontier markets and Asia and has probably forgotten more about these markets than I’ll ever know.
He is the CEO and Fund manager at Asia Frontier Capital, and has spent 27 years in private banking where he specialized in managing portfolios of listed and unlisted equities.
He’s been investing in Asian and African Frontier Markets since 1993 and was the former Managing Partner, CFO & COO of Leopard Capital; and was previously a Managing Director and Head of Portfolio Management at LGT Bank in Hong Kong. He also held senior investment positions at Bank Julius Baer in Zurich and Hong Kong.

By Chris at www.CapitalistExploits.at

As a teenager brimming with testosterone my reptilian brain loved action movies.
Top of my list were Steven Seagal movies. Clearly it wasn’t for his acting skills, which are only marginally better than Barney the dinosaur.
What I loved about Seagal was that he was both deadly and terribly fast. His opponents had mere seconds before their arms, legs, or other bones were snapped like twigs. Or they suffered a severe beating leaving them either dead or in a bludgeoned unrecognisable mess. Fabulous stuff!
With Seagal risk happened fast. The targets of his aggression never had time to get out once the onslaught began, and then it was all over in seconds. None of this drawn out biff-baff nonsense, taking forever to finally get to where you knew things were headed anyways.
Back in January of 2015 the currency markets had a “Seagal moment”.
The Swiss National Bank (SNB) had pegged the Swiss Franc to the Euro at 1.20 and by the end of 2014 had already spent billions defending the peg.
All the numbers told us the peg was untenable. We didn’t know how long the peg would hold but we did know that with every passing day what was clearly untenable simply became more untenable. The stress was building.
Failing to participate is one of my regrets.