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31 January 2012 19:13

Heart of China bull beats strong

With rising incomes and increasing urbanization, we believe China is pursuing the American Dream.

My debate last week with Gordon Chang on China's future at the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference was a stimulating, intellectual exercise. A healthy market needs a compromise between the bid and ask, and a discussion between people who strongly disagree is a great way to promote critical thinking.

Critical thinking is vital to our investment process as a means to ensure that we question assumptions. One way our portfolio management team practices a critical-thinking process is through a weekly S.W.O.T. (Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats) analysis of key factors influencing global markets. By hammering out the positives and negatives, we can paint an accurate picture of the realities we face. The S.W.O.T. model allows us to avoid pitfalls by weighing the evidence....

30 January 2012 19:09

The Year of the Dragon dawns

Dr. Mark Mobius gives his outlook on China’s economy.

  • Despite some slowdown in 2011, China remains one of the fastest-growing major economies in the world, attracting investors internationally

 

  • Sector focus: The two "Cs" -- commodity and consumer stocks - are expected to trend upward this year

 

This dawning of the Year of the Dragon gave rise to great excitement across China and Chinese communities worldwide. To the Chinese, Dragon years are associated with great deeds, innovative ideas and big projects. However, outside China, some commentators have been a little less sanguine about the country's prospects, pointing to reduced GDP figures and poor stock market performance last year. While a...

28 January 2012 18:30

Is there oil in Kenya?

In recent years the government has been actively promoting Kenyan exploration acreage.

While Kenya has no proven reserves of hydrocarbons, the National Oil Corporation of Kenya (NOCK), which is 100% owned by the government, in recent years has been actively promoting Kenyan exploration acreage and this has led to the signing of numerous Production Sharing Contracts (PSCs) covering exploration blocks. Looking at history, a number of oil exploration companies were involved in the exploration for oil in Northern Kenya in the 1980's and 1990's, but then pulled out. However, there is general consensus that the potential of discovering oil and gas is high given the fact that data acquisition and interpretation techniques used nowadays are more advanced.
Kenya has four major sedimentary basins (Lamu, Anza, Mandera and Tertiary Rift) with a total surface area of 400,000km&su...

Recent Posts

Asia appears resilient to eurozone woes

23 January 2012 04:53

A European recession will probably be nothing on the scale seen in 2008.

China to aid Saudi Arabia in nuclear power development

19 January 2012 18:53

Saudi Arabia is the largest supplier of oil to China.

The end of Europe?

16 January 2012 21:30

The Mayan were predicting the end of Europe, not the end of the world, write John Mauldin.

Pakistan to produce gas

11 January 2012 21:48

By burning underground coal.

Emerging markets: Yesterday, today and tomorrow

11 January 2012 21:43

New insights from two emerging market luminaries.

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