Eurekahedge: The markets have been very volatile in 2011 so far, how has the performance of your funds been? What are some of the key themes that have worked for you in this year?
Booth: Well, emerging debt has not been very volatile; that is the first point. In fact for emerging debt, both dollar debt and local currency debt have been significantly less volatile than US treasuries but they have performed well and are increasingly seen as a better risk than a developed market equivalent. Emerging markets are the beneficiaries of a global reassessment of risk, and basically the driving factor of this is the combination of the workout after three decades of increasing leverage in the developed world. Increasingly, there will be a global rebalancing which has barely started, and will be driven by the policy action of central banks in the emerging markets via the big first world countries. It will be their action which is largely driven by the need to control inflation – that is what is motivating them. It is their action which will drive global currency as we are in an environment which is extremely healthy for emerging market, fixed income, currencies; and equities of course have been more volatile mirroring the S&P etc. but on the fixed income side it has really been a very successful year.
