This is the last blog for 2013 as I am off this weekend for a break with the extended family in Washington, DC. I will take my laptop with me but I hope markets will remain calm and boring and I will not have to file.
Here are two commodities that may do better in the short term, Zinc and Tungsten. The Indian government is investigating billionaire Anil Agarwal for corruption in a deal for partial privatization of a zinc company, which will delay the closing. His Vedanta Resources acquired state-controlled Sesa Sterlite which the government sold without the required Parliamentary permission. Meanwhile Bloomberg boasts that its articles about a mid-Amazon FARC tungsten mine are about to lead to an attack on the facility by Bogota (although why they would tell reporters before hitting the mine is puzzling.)
We used to own Sesa through Templeton Emerging Markets Fund, but sold before well before the graft may have occurred. It no longer among the top 10 holdings of EMF.
No news from our relatives in Bangkok who I think are old and wise enough to stay away from the demonstrations. They support the yellow-shirts but given that the husband is British I think they will restrain their enthusiasm. I have no family in Turkey to worry about. In Thailand the risk is that the military will intervene on behalf of opponents of the beleaguered red-shirt government. In Turkey the risk is that the military will not resume its traditional interventionist role and leave the leadership dangling.
We got a family update e-mails from a divorced South African cousin who, besides being white is also half-Boer. She mourns Nelson Mandela with obvious sincerity and grouses about her ex failing to pay her alimony, leaving her probably the poorest white woman in the country. She further tells about serious crime affecting relatives and Johannesburg neighbors around “the beloved country.”
I was most troubled by her telling of a violent robbery at the Zulu victory site at Isandlwana where another family member lectures tourists. What an unlucky omen!
