New Covestor manager Diddi Capital Advisors Inc. is a New Jersey based boutique investment advisory firm specializing in Global and Emerging Markets Investment strategies. The experience of the firm since its inception in 2004 has been in investing in the emerging BRIC nations and frontier markets. Rahul Didi, the firm’s founder, describes its investment approach as follows:
The strategy of the firm is to take a value-investing approach to international and emerging markets investing. We follow a diversification strategy that allocates assets across regions and industries covered by individual strategies to manage risk.
Mr. Diddi was educated in India, Russia (Engineering; Moscow) and the U.S. (MBA, Finance from Western Michigan University and Executive M&A training at Wharton). Mr. Diddi is fluent in Russian, Hindi & Punjabi.
Diddi Capital Advisors’ Russia Only Covestor model, launched on February 11, 2011, seeks to build a diversified portfolio of U.S.-listed equities of Russian companies, U.S.-listed ETFs and closed end funds investing in Russia, and U.S.-listed international companies with significant exposure to Russia. Initial positions include the Market Vectors Russia ETF (NYSE: RSX), BP (NYSE: BP), Lukoil (LUKOY.PK), VimpelCom (NYSE:VIP) and Gazprom (OGZPY.PK).
Bloomberg reported on April 1 that the Russian economy grew fully 4.5% in the fourth quarter of 2010, as commodity prices continued to rise and the nation’s companies raised their investment to meet rising domestic demand:
President Dmitry Medvedev set a growth target of 10 percent within five years to pull the world’s biggest energy supplier into line with emerging-market peers in China, Brazil and India. The economy lost momentum in the third quarter after the worst drought in at least half a century slowed expansion by as much as 0.8 percentage point, according to the Economy Ministry.
But analysts were expecting even more robust growth:
“I still think we can say this is a pretty lackluster recovery, particularly by historic standards,” Neil Shearing, senior emerging-market analyst at Capital Economics in London, said by phone. “There’s mounting evidence that real wage growth has started to slow and that’s feeding into slow retail sales.”
President Medvedev is in a process of convincing ministers to leave corporate boardrooms as part of the nation’s privatization process. From Rianovosti:
The Kremlin insists the move is part of efforts to “improve Russia’s investment climate.”
But experts suggest Medvedev is trying to gain ground ahead of the 2012 presidential election by dismissing some of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s closest allies as oil and gas regulators and company directors. Putin has hinted he may try to elbow Medvedev aside at the polls.
Sources:
“Russian Economy Grew 4.5% in Fourth Quarter, Less Than Economists Forecast” Scott Rose, Bloomberg.com 4/1/11
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-01/russian-economy-grew-4-5-in-fourth-quarter-less-than-economists-forecast.html
“Medvedev says ministers must leave boardrooms by July” Rianovosti, 2/4/11
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20110402/163339220.html
