Milltrust Alert – Selected Insights from the Emerging Markets and Around our Business

Beaten-down emerging market stocks could be a winning trade in 2019

• Emerging market stocks fell into a bear market in 2018 after four Federal Reserve rate hikes and the start of a U.S.-China trade war.
• However, a potential slowdown in Fed policy-tightening, a possible resolution to the U.S.-China trade war and valuations at multi-year lows could bolster these shares in the new year, experts say.
• “The rubber band is wound up so tight that EM as a broad asset class can produce good returns,” says one strategist. “I’m afraid investors are just going to pile into the U.S. market and ignore emerging-market stocks.”

Sustainable investment in Asia: Ready to take off
By Ligia Torres, CEO Asia-Pacific, BNP Paribas Asset Management
Broader adoption of environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing is now accelerating in Asia. In particular, we’re seeing a greater push by leading institutions or governments in embracing ESG.

Money managers: the new warriors of climate change
Spreadsheet-analysing investors in control of trillion-dollar funds are forcing polluters to change. A growing number of individuals at asset managers, pension groups and sovereign wealth funds are using their power to push the biggest corporate polluters to tackle climate change, spearheading campaigns to cut carbon emissions, boost disclosure on climate risk and hold managers accountable

Droughts now ‘the norm’ Down Under
Droughts can no longer be regarded as abnormal or exceptional events Down Under, the Australian Farm Institute says. Australia is in the midst of a drought of historic proportions. January to September rainfall in 2018 was the second-lowest since 1900 for the Murray-Darling Basin bread basket and September rainfall was the lowest nationally since European settlement in 1788.

Avocados were so last year
Bad news for the new avocado toast coffee shop down the block: No one is buying avocados anymore. That’s what the farmers are saying, at least. Agriculture companies’ stocks are falling dramatically because avocado demand has gone markedly down, reports the Wall Street Journal. This is bad news for farmers, but also for millennials because it’s unclear what hip food is sustaining them now!

Scottish farmed salmon disease prevention to be researched
A major research initiative supported by the SRUC, Scotland’s rural college, and the University of Edinburgh’s Roslin Institute (one of Milltrust’s investments through the British Innovation Fund)  is to be launched to help understand and prevent diseases affecting farmed salmon – including sea lice and gill health conditions. Tens of millions of pounds are spent annually in response to disease outbreaks at Scottish salmon farms. The £3.5m programme will focus on prevention, rather than treatment. Farmed salmon is one of Scotland’s biggest food exports, valued at more than £1bn a year.

Metabolite produced by gut microbiota from pomegranates reduces inflammatory bowel disease.
This only happens if you actually have the organisms and they can convert ellagic acid in pomegranate to ULA. Milltrust Cerracap II investment, Viome.com, can detect if this pathway is active or not so we know if pomegranate juice or berries are actually going to help you or not.