Thai Interest rates

They stayed flat @ 1.5% with the new BOT chief stating that the Thai economy looks like it may have already bottomed during the 4Q15. We have our doubts on this (perhaps by 2H16 the market and the economy will begin a decent growth path again) and believe a lot of central bankers are waiting to see how the Fed reacts in the coming months before deciding what to do locally.

Advertising Soda and Green tea being banned

First there was a lot of hubbub from the government in regards to celebrities having their selfies including alcohol beverages on their social site’s (ouch to ThaiBev), now there’s a movement within the government to ban the advertising of sodas and green teas for their high sugar content potentially hurting OISHI & ICHI, and finally Dr Samarn Futrakul, the director of the Office of Alcoholic Drinks Control Committee, has stated that Beer Gardens are illegal…This is going to be one dry winter season if this government really wants to continue to make people “happy”.

Running a Fund

We just received our first NAV report (pop the champagne!) from our Fund Administrator last week. The past few weeks have been rather exciting, nerve wracking, intense, one position that was a decent size in the port declined 10% to only finish the past week at a profit, so if I had just closed my eyes, nothing would’ve changed. I remember reading somewhere years ago, and fully agreeing with it, those of us responsible for investing clients funds, who love the business and the challenge are absolutely masochistic.

The blog/email list

The past 2 weeks have seen some changes to this blog, some for the better, some for the worse. Hopefully, if you’re reading this from the weekly email, the links should finally work (a new design doesn’t always translate to easy relinking) and the odd ad’s that used to pop up on the website are gone. This blog is now… nearly 4 years old and it’s akin to the stock market, there’s demand for specific articles and those have the highest hits and if I supply articles that people don’t care about then those have the lowest hits, regardless I’ll continually try to change things here and there, whether it be design, email, titles, new content etc..and depending upon how the thousand of you that read this daily or what makes me happy (I’m the invisible hand…) we’ll see if things stay or go. However I do appreciate the emails that were sent across highlighting these past issues, do keep it up and thanks for reading!