A look at Asian markets

Hedge Funds: The Future Is Asia.

2018 saw broad based decline in Asian markets and a reduction in the demand for Asia focused managers. However, industry experts remain sensitive to the political landscape and the potential near term impact of trade policies by the US, China and other prominent global trading partners. Moreover, they believe that this declining trend will reverse, and that the reversal will be one of the strongest trends over the next decade.

Last year, the International Monetary Fund reported that two thirds of world economic growth over the next 5 years will come from Asia. At the same time, valuations of equities on a number of Asian markets trade significantly below valuation levels of European and U.S. markets.

Many of the Asian markets are dominated by retail investors creating pricing inefficiencies that are ripe to be captured by hedge fund managers. With the growing Asian markets, we are seeing an enormous expansion of wealth that will be looking for investment ideas to deploy their capital. For many U.S. based hedge fund managers, their global marketing strategy has been primarily focused on Canada, Switzerland and the UK. Over the next decade this will expand drastically to include Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia, and Korea among other countries.