The VP Blog
A blog about financial markets and the VP investing framework
China Losing its Edge on Exports
The meteoric rise in Chinese exports now appears to be losing steam with world export market share falling by 1%-point over the last two years and potentially mirroring Japan’s long-term retrenchment. While the sluggish pace of world trade growth since 2008 has...
read moreIf China loses, who wins?
With China taking the brunt of the escalating trade war, we have identified several economies that could benefit from China’s loss (assuming that President Trump continues to focus on China and does not pursue blanket tariffs on all exporting nations). To gauge this,...
read moreRUBCAD to Catch up to Crude Oil
RUBCAD tends to be a FX pair that’s highly correlated with moves in Brent (top-left chart). The main appeal of RUBCAD as a relative-value trade against crude is that there is much less direct US dollar exposure from the trade. Both Russia and Canada are dependent on...
read moreUnderstanding EM Crises
We recently published a new white paper on EM Crises. In this report, we look at the history of EM crises. How they unfold, and when they become buying opportunities. EM crises have generated some of the largest market sell-offs in the last 25 years. At the same...
read moreChilean Peso-Copper Correlation Returns
Having suffered at the hands of the protracted drawdown in global copper prices over the course of 2011-2015, Chilean copper production has recovered in line with the rally in prices since the beginning of 2017. This in turn has allowed the Chilean peso-copper...
read moreThe Asian Currency Crisis of 1997: What You Can Learn From It
Failing to spot the Asian currency crisis of 1997 would have been disastrous for an investor. In the case of Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines, it took almost a decade for equity markets to reach January 1997 levels again in nominal terms. But, how can you see a...
read moreWatch the Yield Curve for Value Outperforming Momentum
(from our weekly report of May 29th) Momentum continues to carry the market. Of the main pure factors listed by Bloomberg for the US, it is the best performing on a YTD and a one-year basis (top-left chart). At the other end of the scale, the value factor has...
read moreHow Our Investment Framework Identified the Retail Rally
The financial media and economists are almost always late to a trade. That’s because they’re reporting on what has been performing well and are simply extrapolating that performance into the future. Retail stocks are the latest example. There is no shortage of...
read moreUK Housing Market Close to Bottom
The UK’s love affair with housing isn’t over, but it has certainly cooled of late. A combination of increased stamp duty on second homes, fewer tax breaks for buy-to-let landlords, and the uncertainty surrounding Brexit have all served to take some of the froth out of...
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