FidelityConnects: From India to Peru: The emerging markets story, continued
Institutional Portfolio Manager Abhijeet Singh joins us to unpack the shifting dynamics across the emerging markets landscape, from Latin America and Europe to Asia. With a focus on countries like Greece, India and South Korea, Abhijeet explores where resilience is building and risks remain, and how investors should think about opportunity in a more fragmented global backdrop.
Transcript
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<b>Subtitles are AI Generated</b>
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Hello, happy Friday. Welcome to Fidelity Connects.
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I'm Pamela Ritchie. Emerging market indices pulled back this week, hit
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by a sharp tech sell-off tied to an AI and semiconductor
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volatility that we've been seeing.
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With AI, a major driver of EM benchmarks, the
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deeper story is how this shift is reshaping leadership across
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regions, sectors and supply chains.
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Our next guest says the opportunity set is broadening beyond Taiwan and Korea
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and into select EM markets where valuations and
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earnings potential still stand out.
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Is this latest dip just part of the AI cycle?
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Where is emerging market leadership evolving from here?
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How should investors position beyond the chip trade?
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Joining us here today to walk us through it all is Abhi Singh.
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He's institutional portfolio manager of the Fidelity Emerging Markets
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Fund. Warm welcome to you. Happy Friday, Abhi.
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Happy Friday to you.
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Great to have you with us and discuss this with us.
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Let's begin a little bit with the fund itself.
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Tell us a bit about this fund, how long it's been around, what the assets
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under management are, and just sort of establish how long this
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fund has been part of the lineup at Fidelity.
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The Emerging Market Fund in Canada goes back a long ways.
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Sam Polyak's fund that he runs today is around,
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I would say $9 billion Canadian dollars, approximately.
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It's been there for a while, has a great track record.
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We've also added a new fund to our lineup run by John Dance
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who's a PM that I work with as well.
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It's early days but that's another flavour of emerging markets that we're very
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happy to bring to the Canadian investors.
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The fund that you helped manage with Sam is much more GARP,
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it's more value, frankly. You're looking at ...
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whereas the newer fund has a bit of a growth tilt.
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Is that fair?
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That's fair. I would categorize Sam as a core portfolio,
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growth at a reasonable price. It can swing between
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growth and value so it's a little bit right in the middle.
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John Dance, the new fund, is a lot more, I would say quality growth and
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looking for long term opportunities.
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That's why the performance cycle is going to be different over time
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but they are both bottom-up stock pickers.
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Let's go into exactly what we were just talking about today.
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We've been watching South Korea, in particular, Taiwan as well, go
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through some major sell-off moments on the memory chip trade
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which has been sky-high for some time.
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The demand is still there, it's still very much a hugely demanded
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commodity.
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The memory chips themselves can't be made fast enough.
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We know this. The pricing story, the valuation story,
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they are selling off. Are you right there in the midst of it all selling off?
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Tell us about how you position in this.
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Just to put in context, today the information
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technology sector is almost 46% of the benchmark.
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That's one thing. That's gone up a lot. Also, at
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a country level the largest countries in the emerging market index are
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Taiwan and Korea--
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Not China.
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--and then China is the third.
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Things have changed and that's really a reflection of how
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the market has moved. I think by some estimates today
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about 55, 60% of the EM index is somehow
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connected or levered or adjacent to
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AI so it is in certain ways quite correlated to what's happening in the US
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in terms of the market moves. You're seeing Korean market
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being very volatile. Huge upside last year,
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huge upside year-to-date, it's been moving up and down
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quite aggressively in the last few weeks if you can see just the
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pure volatility of that. Now, we have been more in the
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cautious bucket. Sam's been careful around how much exposure
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he has to these high-flying names and look for relative
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attractiveness from a valuation standpoint.
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We're not gaga on everything.
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We are overweight in that fund to Samsung.
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We've been there for a long time. It started to work last year.
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It's been working year-to-date pretty good.
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We've been underweight, so benchmark position, our position is less
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than what it's in the benchmark for TSMC which has been a huge story
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here. It's become like 15, 16% of the benchmark, massive.
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SK Hynix is the other one that we are underweight.
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That's also a memory story.
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You got to pick and choose where you play, be more cautious and try to
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diversify out of that AI into other parts of emerging markets.
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That's been the story for the last few quarters.
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AI has been the story, as you mentioned, in developed markets, in emerging
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markets. It is the story.
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How do you suddenly diversify outside of that?
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How does that work broadly maybe on themes and then we'll break it down into
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countries and sectors. How do you get outside of that trade?
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It's very hard. Even if you go into the material sector you end up going
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into areas where you are looking for rare earths, you're looking for things
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that go into, again, manufacturing of chips, manufacturing of the
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various components that go into the data centres.
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We have had some gold exposure that did well last year.
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We've gone into South Africa, Eastern Europe,
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Latin America, these are all places where you can diversify
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and get away. One place that's been a little bit challenging for us to
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find incremental opportunities has been India which has underperformed
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compared to the rest of the index.
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As all these other countries that I mentioned have gone up a lot India has
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actually gone in the other direction.
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We're looking hard. We've been traveling there trying to find ideas.
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Valuations are still a little bit question mark.
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The main thing in India has been, you know, just the economic environment
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has been a little bit weak because they are very dependent on
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import of energy. With the war in the Middle East basically made it
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really hard for the economy to kind of swallow that.
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That has had an impact on the currency and other, you know, just
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investment cycle there has been quite weak.
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That's something to pay attention to and that might create opportunities down
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the road to kind of diversify, again, go into areas that have not really
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participated in this uptick.
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The whole world is trying to figure out how to educate the next generation,
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for instance, with AI in the background.
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You had mentioned when we spoke earlier that the economy of
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India, a large portion of it, really like every economy, is tied
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to jobs that are getting disrupted by AI but particularly software
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in India. Just maybe sort of speak to how that's a bit different than perhaps
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other spots.
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I think that's been a challenge.
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You have the AI infrastructure story where people are building data centres
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and chips and all that to put them in the ground and start doing all these
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large language models. The other side of it is the application story.
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India is in a tough spot because the last few
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decades have seen a huge uptake in jobs related to software development,
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outsourcing, basically, hugely human
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intensive jobs in the tech sector.
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That's where a lot of these
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tools that are coming to market that are helping with
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coding, automation, agentic AI, are kind of taking
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some jobs out of
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the equation. That is also another challenge for India to kind of deal with
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a young, growing working class, finding jobs,
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finding the skills that are gonna be different.
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Now, they have been trying to enhance the manufacturing sector in
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terms of attracting Apple, for example, to build their phones in India but
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that's not the same. It's not apples to apples. You're kind of losing out or
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some growth in one place ...
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yeah, no pun intended ... then you're trying to replace it with other types of
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jobs. It will be interesting to see how that unfolds over the next few years.
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When we look to Latin America, also talk about other parts of
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Asia as well, but when you look to Latin American increasingly the story has
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been it is a supply chain story, it's going to
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be increasingly part of the North American, South American trade story.
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Some of this has been sort of a long
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way out. I'm curious whether from an investment perspective is the
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rubber hitting the road on that a bit more? Is there an integration
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economically between South America and North America
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more? Is it investable?
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Early days I would say.
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You are seeing, for example, Argentina going through a massive amount of
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change from an economic standpoint.
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They have huge reserves that have never been touched, shale reserves
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for energy that are being explored and invested in.
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They are becoming an alternative source to Middle East, not just for
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Americas but also for Europe.
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There's an opportunity there.
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We're playing that. We're also playing a little bit of the
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movement of energy resources around the world.
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How do you transport natural gas?
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What types of containers you need to move it and things like
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that. That's something also I would say is here to stay.
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Regardless of what happens from a ceasefire and end deal perspective
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the world has learned that they need to be really diversified when it comes to
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their energy sources.
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If they don't have their own capability like the
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US does, a huge amount of reserves Canada has, then they have to diversify
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across geographies.
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Places like that are gonna be beneficiaries of that.
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Brazil is a great story in the sense that it's very attractively valued
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but there's an election cycle going on there so there's some uncertainty in the
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market. When will the rate cuts happen?
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The inflation has kind of come down, who is gonna come back in
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power? Our team is, basically, holding off a little bit.
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We'll be visiting Brazil sometime in November of this year to kind of, again
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explore to see who are the new decision makers, who are the same decision
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Is that after the election?
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After the election. That will help us navigate that situation.
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At the aggregate level it looks good but I think there's some uncertainty
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that's there that you want to be cautious on.
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Across South America and perhaps other investments as well, we're asking you
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how do you invest in something that isn't AI.
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Does the answer end up being sort of a version of cyclicals?
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Is that kind of where you go?
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Yes, cyclicals, material sector which is very supply
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constrained, a lot of different parts.
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I mean, memory chips are also cyclical but other parts of cyclicals.
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That's right. Well, it's not behaving like that in the recent years.
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Copper, there's
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a shortage of a lot of these metals that go into
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demand for AI, demand for EVs, demand for electrification.
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The supply side has been relatively muted.
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Not a lot of investment has gone in so what that means is demand is increasing
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or there and supply is limited so that gives you opportunity to increase the
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price and make more profit. We are looking for areas
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where we can find good,
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solid mining companies that are growing
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or adding supply.
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They would be good winners in that space.
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I can go across a lot of different commodities
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whether you're looking at iron ore or copper and different
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things along the way.
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When you look to the Middle East, there's a lot still to be worked
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out. I mean, the Straits today are even going through another question
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mark. Fees are going to be applied. We don't know all of that.
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With that going on how do you approach investing in
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the Middle East? Are there still opportunities for you?
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Well, there was a big sell-off once the hostilities started
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there. We still have some exposure in UAE and
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Saudi in terms of energy related exposure, as you would expect.
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Those did fine because, again, the supply kind
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of ... they got sold off initially but now as things kind of
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normalized a little bit from a traffic perspective you've seen them bounce
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back.
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More on the cautious bucket, I think more leaning in the
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direction of Eastern Europe which includes Turkey,
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Greece, Hungary and places like that.
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We're seeing opportunities there and we've been leading in those types of
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places. In Turkey, for example,
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there's a defence company, there's a cement company, there's a small bank,
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there are all sorts of kind of incremental opportunities there.
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There is an electrical equipment maker that makes the transformers.
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If there's going to be a rebuild effort, which I've talked about in the past.
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You have. I was going to ask for an update.
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It hasn't happened yet but it will eventually.
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This is the idea that if a peace is found between Russia and Ukraine
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that there will be rebuilding and ultimately neighbouring countries will come
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in to spearhead that.
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Anybody that has some excess capacity in those places
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is going to benefit from that.
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That's fascinating. When we go to other parts of Asia, you take a look at
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Indonesia, I'm thinking South Korea we've already talked about, certainly,
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Malaysia, there's a very interesting, probably the same
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story of they are physically located very close to China within
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the realm and the way that we talk about America is becoming tighter on trade.
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Is China not becoming tighter on trade with with its neighbours?
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Are there opportunities in that, are there also risks?
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How do you look at that?
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I think those countries have tried to play both sides,
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work across the globe.
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Make money for everyone.
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Whatever they make they sell everywhere, yes.
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Indonesia is actually interesting. It's been a tough place from an investment
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standpoint. Last year was a most underperforming market and
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this year has been volatile as well.
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Some political issues but then also some issues around MSCI
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warning them that they might get moved out of emerging markets into frontier
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market because of some changes that MSCI wanted to
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see on the Indonesian stock exchange and
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what the criteria is
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for companies to list and regulations around that.
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I think that risk is ...
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it's de-risking as we speak.
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I think this year might be a place where you see an uptick there and
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a catch-up trade in Indonesia because they do have a lot of the
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commodities that I was talking about, traditional iron
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ore and other things that are ...
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coal, et cetera in Indonesia. It's a growing
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economy from a workforce perspective so if
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they can resolve some of these adjacent issues that that
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could be an interesting place to diversify,
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as we were talking about earlier.
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The fund itself, as you mentioned early on, it provides
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more of a core opportunity.
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I guess one of the questions I'd ask you when you say there's an awful lot of
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exposure to countries and places that have
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industrials, that have things that you're taking out of the ground,
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essentially, what is the opportunity?
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If you think of a Canadian investor, which is sometimes home-biased, also
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investing in Canada which has a lot of things that we take out of the
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ground and is expected to do that more, what's
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the benefit? What's the case for investing in countries around the world
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with exposure to such things?
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There's a short supply across
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the world for a lot of these commodities that we're talking about so there's
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that. It's not just Canada, there are a lot of players in the world who
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are trying to take advantage of lack of supply that has been the case
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over the last few years.
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When you go into emerging markets in industrials or in materials
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you're finding companies that are winners, or relative winners, within the
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EM space. We've talked about in the past around the
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defence sector. Korean Aerospace, for example, has been a stock that's been
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in the fund for a long time so I can speak to it.
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We added it over almost four or five years ago.
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That's a company that used to be a very regional player.
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It's becoming bigger because they are seeing customers coming out
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of Middle East, out of Eastern Europe, as there has been more unrest
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in the world. Those stories are very unique, very different that you can
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get here in emerging markets.
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You have a lot of stories around automation, factory automation,
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humanoid robots. There are companies that are building different components
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that will go into that potentially large part
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of the future.
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There are a lot of different things.
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I think as Sam would say a few times in the past, when you're
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looking for innovation outside US emerging markets is
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a great place to go to, whether it's in consumer space, industrial space,
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tech space, which I've talked about in the past.
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Other parts of emerging markets are seeing a lot of innovation also
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in, say, healthcare space.
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China's doing really well there, doing a lot of research, a lot
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or primary research in healthcare, new drugs coming out of China that are
18:16.562 --> 18:18.730
being marketed in the US, et cetera.
18:18.730 --> 18:20.132
There's a lot going on beyond just AI.
18:20.132 --> 18:24.303
Not just the production of the drug, of drugs
18:24.303 --> 18:27.973
that have the IP somewhere else.
18:27.973 --> 18:31.910
Take us into this moment for emerging markets, put
18:31.910 --> 18:34.780
it in the context of the last couple of years. The international trade broadly
18:34.780 --> 18:38.784
has been on fire and has sustained itself through lots of
18:38.784 --> 18:43.388
ups and downs within the markets. There seems to be some real heat behind that.
18:43.388 --> 18:46.892
Emerging markets has been a huge beneficiary sort of within that.
18:46.892 --> 18:50.596
Is it still a great time pricing wise to enter?
18:50.596 --> 18:55.434
Is there still that dispersion with developed markets?
18:55.434 --> 18:58.537
Some of it has been caught up, has it not?
18:58.537 --> 19:02.508
In some places it has but I think when you start comparing, say, SK
19:02.508 --> 19:06.845
Hynix to the memory players in the US it still looks pretty
19:06.845 --> 19:08.947
inexpensive.
19:08.947 --> 19:13.185
They're going to be coming and listing, I think, an ADR or something in the US
19:13.185 --> 19:17.089
that's going to create more demand for that particular stock.
19:17.089 --> 19:21.260
If you compare to the US they still look quite inexpensive.
19:21.260 --> 19:25.430
If you look at the performance of the asset class over the last 10
19:25.430 --> 19:29.501
years then you'll see that 8 out of 10 years it
19:29.501 --> 19:35.174
lagged quite a bit. It didn't do as well, US kept going up.
19:35.174 --> 19:38.877
Between last year and year-to-date things have looked much better.
19:38.877 --> 19:43.282
They have caught up a little bit but there's a lot of room to go.
19:43.282 --> 19:47.452
Now, in the same context, thinking about the US dollar,
19:47.452 --> 19:51.290
whether it's strengthening or weakening, last year we had a little bit of
19:51.290 --> 19:55.227
weakening dollar story and first couple of months of this year saw the same
19:55.227 --> 19:57.729
thing. We saw EM do very well.
19:57.729 --> 20:02.034
War starts, US dollar starts getting stronger again.
20:02.034 --> 20:04.236
March was a little bit on the other side.
20:04.236 --> 20:08.173
I think if you believe things settle down that
20:08.173 --> 20:12.778
dollar likely weakness or at least rangebound
20:12.778 --> 20:16.815
in the mid to near term is gonna be also
20:16.815 --> 20:20.786
a tailwind for EM. If Fed goes back to
20:20.786 --> 20:23.755
cutting rates at some point that'll be a tailwind as well.
20:23.755 --> 20:28.427
There are a lot of different other factors at a macro level that can keep
20:28.427 --> 20:31.997
driving this performance forward with caution.
20:31.997 --> 20:35.934
It's interesting you say that because that seems like way
20:35.934 --> 20:39.938
out. I mean, for current markets, as you know, hikes are being priced in
20:39.938 --> 20:42.207
in the US which is affecting the dollar.
20:42.207 --> 20:46.078
An area where you're looking at cuts, I was going to ask you broadly, the
20:46.078 --> 20:50.182
horizon that investors need to enter a fund such
20:50.182 --> 20:52.584
as this one would be what?
20:52.584 --> 20:55.187
I mean, you're almost looking past...
20:55.187 --> 20:58.390
Three to five years. You've got to always think about three to five year time
20:58.390 --> 20:59.725
horizon for where you are today.
20:59.725 --> 21:02.361
Not what's in the middle.
21:02.361 --> 21:07.065
You can't react to day to day or month to month or quarter to quarter
21:07.065 --> 21:08.066
volatility.
21:08.967 --> 21:11.870
I would suggest think long term.
21:11.870 --> 21:18.043
It's a great opportunity to be diversified within the equity universe.
21:18.043 --> 21:22.047
Even though there is a lot of AI in EM as well there's a lot of other things
21:22.047 --> 21:26.018
as well so there can be a rotation that funds
21:26.018 --> 21:30.522
like ours that are diversified can benefit from that while continuing
21:30.522 --> 21:33.425
to have some AI related exposure.
21:33.425 --> 21:37.362
When you see things going on, for instance, what went on in March there
21:37.362 --> 21:41.266
were essentially opportunities to enter positions.
21:41.266 --> 21:45.737
Take us back to perhaps South Korea, maybe also
21:45.737 --> 21:49.675
TSMC. Are there moments where there are still interests
21:49.675 --> 21:53.045
there or is the market just a little bit overdone?
21:53.045 --> 21:57.049
It sounds like even on sell-offs you are interested in
21:57.049 --> 22:01.486
South Korea, or not yet?
22:01.486 --> 22:02.487
A little hard.
22:03.388 --> 22:06.925
It's a little bit more volatile. Again, it depends on the manager and the fund
22:06.925 --> 22:11.029
that we're talking about. Overall, when markets sold
22:11.029 --> 22:15.067
off in March we
22:15.067 --> 22:19.071
took the opportunity to add a couple of names in Taiwan that were
22:19.071 --> 22:23.241
good names. One of them makes power management
22:23.241 --> 22:26.144
solutions for data centres.
22:26.144 --> 22:30.682
Another one is more of a TPU,
22:30.682 --> 22:35.587
Google is making these TPUs which are chips that are for training,
22:35.587 --> 22:39.791
referencing, inferencing.
22:39.791 --> 22:43.195
We had a name that was there, we added that because it sold off a lot with the
22:43.195 --> 22:47.432
rest of the market. We did take some opportunity to increase
22:47.432 --> 22:51.803
some exposure there but overall we're still kind of underweight Taiwan,
22:51.803 --> 22:54.272
Korea and AI.
22:54.272 --> 22:58.076
Our outperformance is coming from the other parts of the market while this is
22:58.076 --> 23:01.980
where we're kind of being a little bit more cautious, at least in Sam's fund.
23:01.980 --> 23:06.284
Again, in various markets, maybe we'll go back to the sort of South America,
23:06.284 --> 23:10.522
North America discussion, when supply chains are being reworked,
23:10.522 --> 23:15.026
and they have to for lots of different reasons,
23:15.026 --> 23:16.995
the infrastructure story is there?
23:16.995 --> 23:20.832
I mean, is that where the industrial play is or is that more on actually
23:20.832 --> 23:25.003
materials? Is there more airports, ports, all those things,
23:25.003 --> 23:27.572
the sort of nation building stories?
23:27.572 --> 23:31.243
I think those are there. That's true for India as well where they are still
23:31.243 --> 23:35.614
investing a lot in the infrastructure side of things, having
23:35.614 --> 23:39.718
equipment or ships or containers to move energy, that's
23:39.718 --> 23:44.022
incremental investment. I think Argentina is a great example that has
23:44.022 --> 23:50.262
done a lot of economic changes and they're trying to
23:50.262 --> 23:52.597
exploit shale gas deposits that are there.
23:52.597 --> 23:56.701
It'll be a multi-year story but that will be a
23:56.701 --> 24:02.207
potential driver for a while for that particular opportunity.
24:02.207 --> 24:06.011
Today, if I look, our biggest overweight at the country level is actually
24:06.044 --> 24:08.413
China. Why?
24:08.413 --> 24:12.884
It has not stayed up with Korea and Taiwan.
24:12.884 --> 24:17.389
There is still worries about the
24:17.389 --> 24:21.726
consumer in China, some of the data points that have come in the last few
24:21.726 --> 24:25.063
weeks consumer remains weak.
24:25.063 --> 24:28.233
They're sitting on cash, they've saved a lot of money, they have been worried
24:28.233 --> 24:32.637
about real estate for a while but the government has not
24:32.637 --> 24:36.408
necessarily stimulated the domestic side of the equation.
24:36.408 --> 24:40.312
Do you expect that? I mean, for some time there have been targeted stimulus
24:40.312 --> 24:44.115
expected and they largely have not come through.
24:44.115 --> 24:48.119
Is that something you would invest into with that expectation or not?
24:48.119 --> 24:50.689
I think we've become a little bit more cautious there.
24:50.689 --> 24:53.925
I think the trade has been more around exports in China.
24:53.925 --> 24:58.029
Companies that export stuff out of China tend to
24:58.029 --> 25:02.367
make higher margins when they sell the stuff outside China versus
25:02.367 --> 25:04.169
the domestic market.
25:04.169 --> 25:07.539
We maintain some exposure to the consumption side of stories.
25:07.539 --> 25:11.843
I think if you start seeing some weakness in the export
25:11.843 --> 25:15.780
sector you can safely assume that the domestic
25:15.780 --> 25:19.818
sector will be stimulated to kind of keep the growth going and keep the economy
25:19.818 --> 25:20.819
kind of humming.
25:21.720 --> 25:25.757
Keep some exposure there and maybe add to it if you start seeing some signs on
25:25.757 --> 25:28.660
the weakness when it comes to exports.
25:28.660 --> 25:32.864
One area, just remembered,
25:32.864 --> 25:37.002
when the war started in Middle East we added to
25:37.002 --> 25:38.970
some EV exposure.
25:39.004 --> 25:43.041
BYD was a name that was in the fund, we added to it.
25:43.041 --> 25:47.679
CATL is the biggest battery maker for EVs and energy storage.
25:47.679 --> 25:49.548
We added to that position as well.
25:49.548 --> 25:53.652
I think one thing that we feel is with
25:53.652 --> 25:57.756
all the uncertainty around the energy sector and the
25:57.756 --> 26:01.960
price at the pump the demand for EVs has actually seen a
26:01.960 --> 26:05.230
pretty sizable uptick around the world.
26:05.230 --> 26:09.067
That might be here to stay for a while, I think that makes sense too.
26:09.067 --> 26:13.204
Again, that's in that export bucket within China but
26:13.204 --> 26:15.540
nonetheless important exposure there.
26:15.540 --> 26:18.643
Including that specific example ...
26:18.643 --> 26:22.547
you'll hear a lot about with difficulty of figuring out exactly what trade is
26:22.547 --> 26:26.551
going to look like going forward and America's trade deals with various
26:26.551 --> 26:30.655
countries, you do hear Europe and others going more to China
26:30.655 --> 26:31.656
for deals.
26:32.624 --> 26:36.761
What does that represent in terms of investment for
26:36.761 --> 26:40.532
you, or maybe nothing.
26:40.532 --> 26:43.902
BYD is selling around the world wherever they're allowed to sell, they're
26:43.902 --> 26:48.073
pretty good cars and quite reasonable in terms of price points.
26:48.073 --> 26:52.043
Wherever they are allowed to enter certain markets they're taking a lot
26:52.043 --> 26:56.348
of market share so that's a story that keeps playing.
26:56.348 --> 27:00.418
The CATL which is a battery company, they make
27:00.418 --> 27:04.422
most of the Tesla batteries and all EVs and they
27:04.422 --> 27:08.426
are also entering into
27:08.426 --> 27:11.596
energy storage solutions for data centres.
27:11.596 --> 27:15.600
There's a lot of talk about data centres, how energy intensive they are,
27:15.600 --> 27:20.271
they're gonna eat up everything that's around them, part
27:20.271 --> 27:25.143
of the story there is gonna be generation of energy nearby
27:25.143 --> 27:29.714
where tech companies pay for it, but they're also storing it
27:29.714 --> 27:33.418
for use during peak times. Things like that.
27:33.418 --> 27:37.555
Companies like CATL and others could benefit from that tailwind as well.
27:37.555 --> 27:41.559
Okay, really interesting. The overweight is to China even though at the moment
27:41.559 --> 27:45.630
in the benchmark it's number three. It gives a good
27:45.664 --> 27:47.899
descriptor of how you invest.
27:47.899 --> 27:51.503
Great to speak with you, Abhi. Is there any just final note that you'd like to
27:51.503 --> 27:55.040
sort of tie it up with for investors who might be taking a look at this for
27:55.040 --> 27:56.041
their portfolios?
27:56.975 --> 28:00.979
I would just say even though like last year, year and a half, have been pretty
28:00.979 --> 28:05.083
good for the asset class there's still a lot of room for it to continue to
28:05.083 --> 28:09.187
play catch-up in terms of valuation and performance over the last decade
28:09.187 --> 28:12.157
plus. EM is a good place to be.
28:12.157 --> 28:16.628
It does provide diversification.
28:16.628 --> 28:20.932
Depending on the fund, how you manage it, you can look outside just AI
28:20.932 --> 28:25.036
and AI adjacent names and become a little bit more diversified across
28:25.036 --> 28:27.439
multiple sectors and countries.
28:27.439 --> 28:31.242
There's always something going on from a political perspective, from trade
28:31.242 --> 28:35.380
perspective, where having boots on the ground, having analysts, having experts
28:35.380 --> 28:40.351
looking at these companies can make a difference and add value
28:40.351 --> 28:41.953
on top of the benchmark.
28:41.953 --> 28:44.255
Totally fascinating. Okay, great to speak with you.
28:44.255 --> 28:46.257
Thank you for joining us on a Friday.
28:46.257 --> 28:49.594
Happy 4th of July which ends up being next week.
28:49.594 --> 28:51.830
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28:51.830 --> 28:54.466
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28:54.466 --> 28:58.770
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29:28.166 --> 29:32.003
The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the participants,
29:32.003 --> 29:35.940
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29:35.940 --> 29:39.944
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30:01.633 --> 30:04.235
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