Salient to Investors: Richard Segal at Jefferies Intl said Russia’s reserves are too large relative to emerging-market dollar bonds so it will be difficult for it to stop buying US, European and Japanese bonds. Luis Costa at Citigroup said Russia’s bond-diversification plan sounds like posturing as the size of its sovereign-wealth
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Analysts say the easing of tensions in Ukraine offers little respite to Russia as low oil prices threaten a recession. 58% of 19 economists say Russia needs its main export crude blend to trade at $100 per barrel or more to avoid a recession, while 19% say
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Alexei Kudrin at Sberbank said: The conflict in Ukraine will take 2 to 3 years at a minimum to resolve Russia’s current level of investment is insufficient for development and maintaining growth above 1%. Growth will near zero or even negative, primarily because of the lack of
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Fareed Zakaria said: The purpose of ISIS’ execution videos was to provoke the US and it worked. Al Qaeda tries to appeal to all Muslims while ISIS is distinctly sectarian and anti-Shiite and hostile to Kurds, Christians and many others in the Middle East – if they all fight in
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Fareed Zakaria said: Islamic terror is not the isolated behavior of a handful of nihilists but a broader culture that has been complicit in it or at least unwilling to combat it. Zawahiri’s effort to recruit Indian Muslims will fail. The Arab world produces fanaticism and jihad
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Fareed Zakaria said: Defeating ISIS would require a large and sustained strategic effort from the US but without significant numbers of US ground troops. ISIS videos of executions are designed to sow terror in the minds of opponents who when facing ISIS fighters now reportedly flee rather
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Sam Vecht at BlackRock says Russian stocks are very cheap, carry a high dividend yield, and earnings downgrades are absent. BlackRock’s Emerging Europe Trust was 50 percent invested in Russian stocks at the end of May. JPMorgan upgraded Russian stocks in June, The Micex is at 5.6
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Karen Umland at the DFA Emerging Markets Small Cap Portfolio Fund is slightly overweight India, and had 15 percent of holdings in Taiwan, over 14 percent in South Korea, over 14 percent in China, and 9.2 percent in Brazil at the end of Q1. Umland dislikes Russia
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Catherine Yeung at Fidelity Investment Mgmt is advising calm, adding that profits are rising and shares just got a lot less expensive as being a contrarian and buying when things seem bad is often a good thing. Goldman Sachs to AMP Capital Investors and JPMorgan Chase are
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: The $50 billion Sochi Olympics is the largest construction project in Russia’s post-Soviet history and a microcosm of Russian corruption, inefficiencies, excesses of wealth and disregard for ordinary citizens. One member of the IOC thinks about a third of the $50 billion has been stolen. Russia is almost
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