A week in the life of…Slim Feriani

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Monday

Like every day when I’m in London, first thing I do, on my way to the office, is to check my BlackBerry and skim through the dozens of emails received overnight. I read a couple of sell side reports summarising market action in the US and Asian equity markets and the FX and bond markets as well as giving me the heads up on various key events or issues of the day and week. I then reply to any urgent internal or external emails. I may also skim through any interesting emerging, frontier and global equities and macro research and often forward some of these to my colleagues, sometimes including some of my thoughts as to how this relates to our current thinking and portfolio positioning.

Once in the office, first things first, I enjoy a café latte while checking my various screens that give me macro data down to our various underlying holdings (funds) as well as a number of stocks from various sectors, which gives me a good feel about daily market action. I also take a look at 5, 10 year and longer-term charts and technical indicators of various assets and portfolio holdings.

Next, I check the news related to the world, financial markets (especially emerging and frontier growth markets) and relevant news within the closed-end funds sector.  We also have the privilege of research from the buy side given that we run fund of funds strategies (focused on emerging and frontier growth markets).

We have our weekly investment team meeting on Mondays. It lasts for an hour. Everyone gives an update on what they see in various regions/countries and funds. We get an update of any trades (mostly in closed-end funds) across our various portfolios from the previous week as well as any trades we may have planned for this week. This meeting is an opportunity to “formally update” everyone on various things, including trips or upcoming events such as meetings and conferences.

The rest of the day includes further interaction with my various colleagues and dealing with investment management matters, including reading research and monitoring our various funds. I tend to keep my time on the phone to the very minimum if possible.

We had a Brazilian fund manager in the office.  The meeting was arranged by my colleague Andrew Lister who covers Latin America for us. Hence, he attended the meeting along with another colleague from our investment team as we always prefer to have no less than two people at any meeting.  I try to attend as many manager meetings as possible, especially when they’re held at our office and it’s one of our underlying holdings. Unfortunately, I had too much on my plate that day but the team always sends round full meeting notes to keep us all updated. 

I leave the office as usual on a daily basis around 8pm.

Tuesday

The day starts as usual, with the same “routine” as described on Monday.

I then join my colleagues Viktor Broczko and Bernard Moody at a meeting with the fund manager, chairman and corporate broker of a Qatari fund. It’s one of the top 10 holdings in our flagship Advance Frontier Markets Fund. It was a good opportunity to get an update on the portfolio, key holdings, and political and macro outlook for Qatar and the wider GCC region. The meeting was organised by my colleague Viktor, who covers the Middle East for us.

Next, lunch meeting with a fund manager based in Shanghai managing Greater China funds. We are currently not invested with him. He gave me an update on their China, Taiwan and Greater China funds as well as his views on the macro outlook for China. He sees no landing whatsoever there and remains very bullish.

I skip our afternoon manager meeting with a firm investing in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, which my colleagues Bernard Moody and Samir Shah attended.  We’re not invested with them.

Wednesday

I have only one manager meeting, with a start-up investing in Iraqi equities managed by someone I’ve known for a long time having worked together on the MENA region at Nomura in 1997-1999. There are very few choices of managers providing access to this market.  Hence, we’ll be watching this team’s development and performance closely.

Thursday

No meetings today. It’s a day of catching-up on emails, investment management (including reading research) and preparation for our quarterly asset allocation meeting tomorrow (Friday).

Friday

The highlight of today’s research is the weekly fund flows data. It’s the first week of inflows (albeit marginal) into emerging market equities after an unprecedented 22 weeks of outflows and a massive $51 billion of outflows so far this year (which exceeds the annual levels reached in 2008, 2011 and 2013). There seems to be light at the end of the EM tunnel!

Most of the day is dedicated to our quarterly asset allocation meeting.  We dissect our portfolios from top-down and bottom-up points of view.

Thank God it’s Friday!

Notes to editors

Advance Emerging Capital is a London based investment management company with a unique, specialised investment process dedicated to Global Emerging and Frontier Markets equities.  The Company was founded in 1996 and has managed emerging markets equities since 1998 and frontier markets equities since 2005 when Dr. Slim Feriani became CIO.

Advance Emerging Capital manages 6 funds, with combined AUM of over $650m, including the LSE listed investment company, Advance Developing Markets Fund (market cap. £234m), and the AIM traded investment company, Advance Frontier Markets Fund (market cap. £97m).