The following is a re-print of the latest monthly newsletter from Niels Jensen of Absolute Return Partners, published with the express permission of the author. Visit www.arpllp.com to learn more about Absolute Return Partners.  You can reach the firm  by email at info@arpllp.com.
The Absolute Return Letter
October 2009
A Country for Old Men and a Bit of [...]

Mark Mobius is one of the most famous Emerging Markets investors and right now he is bullish on Emerging Markets despite a huge rally in shares from late last year. Mobius turned bullish right as shares troughed and has remained so ever since.
Mobius likes the so-called ‘Frontier’ Markets more than the well established BRICs.  [...]

This comes via der Standard, an Austrian daily.  My translation below:
The international financial crisis has hit eastern Europe harder than previously expected, according to a press report. At least ten states are negotiating with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for billion-dollar aid programs, Handelsblatt learned from within the IMF community. The applications’ status will be [...]

During Alan Greenspan’s tenure at the helm of the Federal Reserve, he was often accused of using monetary policy to target asset markets so as to keep the party going.  In short, Alan Greenspan was seen by many, including myself, as the bubble blower-in-chief. All of this came to an end with the very hard [...]

Marc Faber participated in a roundtable discussion on CNBC this morning about the dreadful figures coming out of Europe (see articles here and here).
At one point, the German CNBC correspondent made a very good comment about Eastern Europe getting killed by a falloff in internal demand due to a severe banking crisis and this being [...]

For a moment forget that Mark Mobius is talking his own book. He suggests in the video below that we are in the early stages of a new bull market for emerging markets. He does not suggest that it will be off to the races from the word go, however. Mobius thinks we are base-building right now.

This comes from Win Thin, a senior currency strategist at Brown Brothers Harriman:
Mexico President Calderon is now saying that Mexico stands ready to take a $30-40 bln IMF credit line. This was a surprise to us, and we view this as a negative for Mexico since no country until now has gone to the [...]

Standard and Poors had their hands full today cutting credit ratings.  They cut Ireland. But, they also cut Hungary, putting the country just above a junk credit rating.  I don’t think these will be the last sovereign debt ratings downgrades, especially in emerging markets — economies worldwide are deteriorating.
The Brown Brothers Harriman currency group has [...]

Goldman Sachs London conducted a poll of fund managers today that had interesting results. The poll demonstrated that fund managers are expecting deflation more than inflation and that they expect the U.S. or Asia to escape the downturn first (and certainly not Europe or the UK). I imagine that funds are positioned accordingly.

Here are the poll results:

The Chief Economist of Goldman Sachs sat down with the FT’s David Oakley and had a go on a number of topics from the financial crisis, investments in Emerging Markets, the future of the Bric (Brazil, Russia, India and China) economies, to the global economy.

Below are links to the three-part video series on the FT website. I think the videos are well worth watching.

Enjoy.