STOCK MARKET IN ARGENTINA IS DOWN
Channel: Value Investing with Sven Carlin, Ph.D.
Date: 2018-05-18

What do I do? Full-time independent stock market analyst and researcher:
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Modern Value Investing book:
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Investing in Argentina

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I usually do the opposite of what others do. Just a year ago according to WSJ, many investors like Morgan Stanley, T. Rowe Price and Ashmore group rushed to buy Argentinian stocks as the situation in the country has been improving under the new president Macri. Their position exposure has been at least 17% of their frontier market portfolios which is the Argentinian weight in the MSCI Frontier market index.
iShares even launched an Argentinian ETF and all seemed good until interest rates in the U.S. increased which made people think more about the risks and not that attracted to the quick, high interest rate gains in Argentina.
The stock market was doing good and even growing faster than what the currency depreciation was.
However, with increased volatility on financial markets since the beginning of 2018, the situation changed and the trend inverted creating a situation where stocks go down and while the peso continues to depreciate.
There are a few things to think about when looking at such situations:


The impact of past speculation
The value of real assets
Understand the exposure
Look for great businesses




The impact of past speculation

In the last few years inflation in Argentina reached even 40% at the begin of 2016 and has been constantly above 20% since. However, the Argentinian government kept issuing notes in pesos with yields significantly above the inflation rate and the peso depreciation which attracted a lot of speculators. What is it with people and charts that show price increases will always beat me?

Nevertheless, the situation changed and usually when that happens panic creeps in and people try to get out as fast as possible. Mercadolibre (NYSE: MELI), which is the largest position of the MSCI Argentinian index dropped 25% which just shows how prescient Benjamin Graham was when he said that we should expect all our holdings to increase at least 50% from their lows and drop 33% from their highs in a 5 year period.