Will Russia be next?

Voyager2002

Malthusian said:

The trouble with the argument that "Xlandia is a corrupt basket-case country, therefore it has plenty of room for growth, therefore it should be a good investment" is that when corrupt basket-case countries do grow, they are very good at keeping all the growth for the corrupt officials and none for useful idiot foreign investors.

Remember when lots of us got rich from the liberalisation of the Soviet Union in the 90s? No? That's because it didn't happen. If you weren't Russian and well-positioned before perestroika, you didn't stand a chance.

The old adage "if you want to know who will own everything after a crash, look at who owned everything before it" also applies if you replace "crash" with "liberalisation of a corrupt dictatorship".

A convincing argument, but many Western investors did benefit on a large scale from the liberalisation of the Russian economy and the subsequent rise in asset prices: Hermitage Capital and Bill Browder (its CEO) for example. On a more modest scale, my holdings in a fund that invested only in Russia were among my best-performing assets over the last decade. (I was forced to sell at the nadir of the 'covid crash' and since then Russia has not seemed an attractive investment option.)

[Deleted User]

What happened to BRICS investors?

Voyager2002

ZingPowZing said:

What happened to BRICS investors?

China has given fantastic performance.
India has been very good to investors.
Brazil has been a disaster area for investors, as always.
South Africa continues to offer a great deal of promise but not much substance. (I hold one South African company that has performed very well because of a brilliant investment it made in China.)

[Deleted User]

Thanks for the update.

 Goldman Sachs economist Jim O'Neill coined the term BRIC (without South Africa) in 2001, but may have over-reached himself by claiming that by 2050 the four BRIC economies  -Brazil, Russia, India, China -  would come to dominate the global economy!!



I'm 100% USA/UK so happy to hear updates from wilder shores.

Bravepants

Voyager2002 said:

Bravepants said:

Voyager2002 said:

Maybe now is a good time to buy shares in Russian companies, or companies that are very active there. Above all, businesses that sell weapons to the Russian military seem to be on to a good thing judging by the recent display on the border with Ukraine. Any funds or companies that you can suggest?

Investing in the Russian military value chain may be higher risk than bitcoin but is a lot safer than fighting in Donetsk.

We have a friend from Ukraine, she is constantly worried about her parents who both still live there. So I would not want to be someone who would cash in on someone else's misery.

I have good friends in Ukraine and would certainly not want to benefit from their misery. My analysis indicates that the current troop movements near their border are posturing (directed at Washington) rather than anything more serious. They do of course demonstrate that Putin and friends are spending lots on weapons.

And I have to say that companies like British Aerospace (sorry, BAe Systems now) who export weapons to be used in Yemen are probably causing far more misery than any company east of Odessa.

But your analysis doesn't seem to take into account that Russia is our enemy.

Voyager2002

Bravepants said:

But your analysis doesn't seem to take into account that Russia is our enemy.

What? So they started a war and didn't tell me!

Seriously, I thought it was the EU that was supposed to be our enemy, but that kind of talk is best left for Sun-readers and has no place in adult conversations about topics such as choosing investments. And civilans who are shot and killed neither know nor care who fired the gun: Russian bullets in Ukraine or Syria have precisely the same result as British ones in Yemen.

Bravepants

Voyager2002 said:

Bravepants said:

But your analysis doesn't seem to take into account that Russia is our enemy.

What? So they started a war and didn't tell me!

Seriously, I thought it was the EU that was supposed to be our enemy, but that kind of talk is best left for Sun-readers and has no place in adult conversations about topics such as choosing investments. And civilans who are shot and killed neither know nor care who fired the gun: Russian bullets in Ukraine or Syria have precisely the same result as British ones in Yemen.

This thread started with you suggesting what a good idea it would be to invest in companies supplying weapons to the Russian military because of their action in Ukraine. I find your suggestion pretty reprehensible and I tried to indicate that.

Your justification seems to be that it's OK because "there are wars going on all the time and some of them involve weapons made in Britain, so why not?"

It's the same old story, people don't like to be criticized for their choice of faction, and if they do get criticized then they try to distract from their choice by saying "well Britain does it, so you're being a hypocrite", or "well, the EU, Brexit yada yada".

Voyager2002

Bravepants said:

Voyager2002 said:

Bravepants said:

But your analysis doesn't seem to take into account that Russia is our enemy.

What? So they started a war and didn't tell me!

Seriously, I thought it was the EU that was supposed to be our enemy, but that kind of talk is best left for Sun-readers and has no place in adult conversations about topics such as choosing investments. And civilans who are shot and killed neither know nor care who fired the gun: Russian bullets in Ukraine or Syria have precisely the same result as British ones in Yemen.

This thread started with you suggesting what a good idea it would be to invest in companies supplying weapons to the Russian military because of their action in Ukraine. I find your suggestion pretty reprehensible and I tried to indicate that.

Your justification seems to be that it's OK because "there are wars going on all the time and some of them involve weapons made in Britain, so why not?"

It's the same old story, people don't like to be criticized for their choice of faction, and if they do get criticized then they try to distract from their choice by saying "well Britain does it, so you're being a hypocrite", or "well, the EU, Brexit yada yada".

OK, a serious answer.

Firstly, my reasoned conclusion is that Russian large-scale weapons are for display, essentially for a willy-waving contest with the USA. This is of course a colossal wasted of scarce resources, but the companies involved do not fall into the category of being uninvestable on ethical grounds that includes B.Ae Systems and the main tobacco companies.

Secondly, there is no good reason to call Russia "our enemy" unless you identify closely with the Ukrainians who live in the main part of that country (and remember that the people who live in the Donetsk region are Ukrainians who regard Russia as a protector against a malignant foreign puppet ruling in the capital). Britain and Europe are engaged in strategic competition with mainland China for rare earths and strategic minerals and this could easily lead to some kind of 'cold war', but Russia is not involved in this.