Simple Theme

Marketwatch has a video interview with Stephen Burrows, the manager of Forward Global Emerging Markets Fund run by Pictet.

One thing I have written a few times is that often emerging markets have much fewer moving parts which can sometimes make them simpler to understand. One of Mr. Burrow's picks in the interview was PTelekomunikasi Indonesia tbk (TLK), the big phone company of Indonesia.

The idea behind the pick, not unique to emerging markets, is that only 20% of the 240 million citizens have a phone of some sort. Eventually more than 20% of the people will have a phone, cell or otherwise. Mr. Burrows thinks the stock will go up for this reason.

More people with phones is easy to buy into but everything else I know about Indonesia makes it a tough town to invest in.

I think this anecdote illustrates how simple some foreign themes can be.

I have no individual stock exposure to Indonesia but TLK has a 1% weight in ADRE which is a personal holding and also held by some clients.