A few emerging market currencies came under pressure last week and panic spread until it engulfed most major equity markets.

Why, you ask? What does a weak Argentinian Peso or Turkish Lira have to do with the value of stocks in the U.S? Not much really except that investors are very skittish. After the experience of the financial crash of 2008-’09, many investors do not want to take the risk of not understanding how markets might be inter-related. They would like to simply step aside.

A few emerging markets are clearly having troubles. This has been obvious for some time and should come as no surprise. This fact affects some multi-national companies with a lot of business in certain markets, by no means is this a major macro crisis event. Hopefully cooler heads will make the same analysis that we have this week and come to a similar conclusion. No one likes them, but panic attacks happen in markets from time to time. Enthusiasm waxes and wanes.

We believe that this market is not in real trouble

and will provide good returns this year.