Macro perspectives on capital, governance, and Asia — written for investors who think in decades.
This page hosts general thought pieces on Japan, Korea, and India.
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The TSE's P/B directive was not a nudge. It was a structural mandate that quietly reordered the incentive landscape for over 1,800 Japanese companies. Nearly half of all TSE Prime-listed companies were trading below book value — not because they were distressed, but because nobody had ever asked them to do anything differently. The full repricing has barely begun.
Japan has 29.3% of its population over 65 — the highest share on earth. Most investors treat this as a growth constraint. The more interesting question is where the spending goes, and who captures it.
The reordering of industrial geography away from China is the biggest structural shift in global trade since the 1990s. Japan — as materials supplier, equipment maker, and now advanced chip manufacturer — sits at the centre of that shift.
August 5, 2024 was not a crash. It was a demonstration. The yen carry trade is the single largest source of hidden leverage in global markets. The BOJ is still raising rates. The main event has not yet been written.
Core CPI has been above the BOJ's 2% target for 45 consecutive months. Wages are rising at the fastest pace in a generation. The deflationary psychology that defined Japan is breaking. The full repricing of that shift is still ahead.
Takaichi won Japan's largest parliamentary majority in 70 years. Defence spending has hit 2% of GDP ahead of schedule. Japan is building standoff strike capability, revising Article 9, and emerging as a defence exporter for the first time since 1945.
Takaichi's fiscal ambitions and the BOJ's normalisation path are pointing in opposite directions. The yen is caught in the crossfire. How this resolves in 2026 is the central macro question for every investor with Japanese exposure.
Korea has traded at a persistent 30-40% discount to global peers for decades. The causes are structural. The question is not whether the discount will close, but when and how fast.
Korea's chaebol have survived every reform cycle of the past forty years largely intact. The current pressure is different in degree but is it different in kind?
Korea sits at the centre of the global semiconductor supply chain and at the centre of the US-China technology war. Both cannot be true for much longer without something giving way.
Korea has the lowest birth rate of any country on earth. The investment implications run deeper than most macro frameworks have yet incorporated.
Korea's political cycle has a direct and measurable impact on its equity market. Understanding that relationship is not optional for investors with serious Korean exposure.
SK Hynix controls 62% of the global HBM market. All capacity is sold out through 2026. The entire AI infrastructure stack runs on Korean memory. Whether that dominance endures into the HBM4 era is the central question for the Korean equity story.
Korea has declared its ambition to become the world's second-largest semiconductor power. Moving from memory factory to full-spectrum technology player — fabless design, AI chips, and a national industrial strategy running to 2045 — is the defining challenge of this decade.
India is in the middle of the largest infrastructure buildout in its history. The scale, the financing structure, and the investable implications are all underappreciated by markets still pricing India as an emerging economy.
The Goods and Services Tax was not just a tax reform. It was a structural rewiring of how the Indian economy is measured, taxed, and ultimately valued by capital markets.
India trades at a significant premium to every other emerging market. The bulls have a coherent story. So do the bears. The answer, as usual, depends entirely on your time horizon and what you are actually measuring.
Every major geopolitical realignment of the past decade has, almost by accident, improved India's strategic position. Understanding why that is structural rather than coincidental matters enormously for long-term capital allocation.
India's banking and financial services sector is not just an industry. It is the single most direct investable expression of the country's structural demographic and consumption story.
Trump imposed 50% tariffs. India did not flinch. Modi declined a White House dinner, launched precision strikes on Pakistani terror infrastructure, deepened ties with Russia, Europe, and China simultaneously, and concluded a trade deal on its own terms.
India has been formally reclassified as unaligned in 2026. Chairing BRICS, negotiating the EU's most significant trade deal in a generation, managing a China reset, and sustaining 6.6% growth — strategic autonomy is no longer a slogan. It is India's operating model.
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The GCC has built extraordinary wealth. The allocation of that wealth has not kept pace with its scale. Three Asian markets offer permanent capital precisely what Gulf portfolios are missing: structural diversification, deep value at a governance inflection point, and a relational foundation that makes the allocation natural.
A $1.7 trillion market summoned into existence by regulation, yield hunger, and a decade of zero rates. The question is whether the architecture can survive the cycle it has never actually faced.
BDC share prices are the ABX of private credit — the observable instrument pricing what the underlying NAV marks do not yet reflect. The market is not comfortable.
I was managing an institutional Agency MBS, SBA and IG/EM credit book through 2007 and 2008. I watched LIBOR seize up in real time. The sequence of what is happening now feels uncomfortably familiar.