Karrin Insights
14 June 2023
The Changing of the Guards

The shock victory of 43 year old Pita Limjaroenrat from the progressive youth-led Move Forward party in the recent Thailand elections perfectly captures the wind of change seen in ASEAN and many parts of emerging markets. This phenomenon while may vary in specifics, sees common driving factors in public discontent amidst chronic inflation and widespread corruption, which is perceived to be the source for persistently feeble income levels amongst the masses... 

​Karrin News
22 February 2023

The Borneo Sevens, the "Greenest Sevens in the World", will be making a comeback in Sandakan, Sabah on the 17 to 19th March 2023. 

​Karrin Insights
30 January 2023
Port in a Storm. What 2023 holds.

In "Port in a Storm. What 2023 holds." our CIO, AC Tan shares his thoughts on 2023 and how we at Karrin Associates plan to navigate it. 
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If world events at the turn of the decade did not spring nearly enough surprises, 2022 surely made absolute sure of it. A year of superlatives, we witnessed a poisonous concoction of political, economic and social juggernauts which ultimately did not spell well for global asset prices across classes.

News Release
​9 May 2022
Karrin I makes an investment into digital infrastructure company Conversant Pte Ltd

Karrin I, our flagship fund, has made an investment into Conversant Pte Ltd, a Singapore based Content Delivery Network (“CDN”) company with a significant presence across South East Asia.  This digital infrastructure company provides B2B solutions to enable faster delivery of internet content (video, gaming, ecommerce) through a network of geographically distributed servers, resulting in an improved end user internet experience...

Karrin in the News
​27 September 2021

Mamee-Double Decker scion Vuitton Pang on branching out with South Korean convenience store emart24

​Karrin Insights
21 June 2021
Thailand - Darkest Before Dawn

Routinely a bustling destination for both leisure and business travelers alike, the “land of smiles” has in the last few years been anything but. Prominently beleaguered by a shaky political landscape coupled with US-China trade disruptions to its manufacturing supply chain, its dependence on the handsomely lucrative external demand, particularly from tourism which has historically contributed a large c.12% (in 2019) of GDP, is today proving to be its achilles' heel with the Covid-19 pandemic thrown into the mix...

Karrin Insights
16 March 2021 (Updated)
The Asian Consumer (Part 2 of 2) : Evolving Consumer Behaviours

The millennial generation accounts for 27% of the world’s population or c.2 billion people. Interestingly, about 58% of these millennials live in Asia making that c. 1.2 bil Asian millennials. These individuals are today sophisticated, they are socially aware, tech savvy, are expressive of their opinions and are open to change. It is therefore no longer sufficient for companies to ascertain what consumers buy when income rises, but to ensure continued relevance and success...

Karrin Insights
10 November 2020 (Updated)
The Asian Consumer (Part 1 of 2) : A Rising Tide 

Amidst the vast swathe of hard hit sectors from the Covid-19 pandemic, the Asian consumer segment in our view stands out as having both good cyclical and structural prospects, which we at Karrin Associates are focused on. While we are positive on its medium to long term prospects, that is not to say that the Covid-19 virus have not impacted it severely, it has and would probably hit it again if a second wave is observed... 

Karrin Insights
12 August 2020 (Updated)
Global Hegemony

The world today is quickly turning into a two-bloc playground revealing a US-China 'cold war' spectacle. Originating with trade disputes following the election of Donald Trump as US President, this US-China spat has since taken on many other forms, lately exacerbated by the Covid-19 virus blame-game and more current is the touchy subject of Hong Kong’s sovereignty. With little reason for this spat to abate given the race to the bottom by both US Presidential candidates in finding a common...

Karrin Insights
18 May 2020
Law of Unintended Consequences

By the end of 2020, it is estimated that the world's six largest central banks will have taken their balance sheet holdings from around $15 trillion to a whopping $25 trillion worth of assets. With an estimated $10 trillion by end 2020, the Fed is a key contributor to the $25trilllion worth of assets, ​injecting if you like $8.6bil / day and a professed ‘upper bound of infinity’. The ramifications to asset prices are immense and if the experience of the 2008 crisis had left the common man on the street...

Karrin Insights
11 May 2020
Champagne Supernova

Caught beneath the landslide of many firsts, the U.S. Federal fund futures, a gauge on where investors expect Federal fund rates to go to, pointed at a negative territory on Friday (8th May 2020) for late 2020 delivery. While we continue to believe that the Fed will not pursue a negative interest rate policy and that there is every chance for expectations in the futures market to not materialize...

Karrin Insights
4 May 2020
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Haircut...is the first thing this author is going to get once allowed out of the house. Sadly, that is also the painful but essential course of action many firms will likely have to take on its cost structure as the world returns gingerly from the Covid-19 lockdown. Positives are noted but with companies picking up broken pieces in a cautious environment...

Karrin Insights
27 April 2020
Canary in a Coal Mine

2020 has been the recipient of many firsts. Thus far, oil prices going negative, a global lockdown, a potential depression like no other, record US unemployment at 20.6% and counting, USD1.4 trillion purchases of financial assets in March by the G7 (5X that of April 09, and more to come), the Feb buying high yield debt, ‘Dr.’ Donald...

Karrin Insights
20 April 2020
The Hangover

The proverbial alphabet soup of stimulus introduced by the Fed and the American government has fuelled a >30% relief rally above March 23rd lows, sufficient to sway bears into thinking that market lows have been reached. This relief has been greeted with some fanfare, but a slew of downgrades by banks, IMF, OPEC...

Karrin Insights
13 April 2020
(Un)clear and Present Danger

Some signs have emerged over the weekend that the Covid-19 virus growth is slowing earlier than expected in NYC, the epicentre of Covid-19 in the US and EU. These numbers while still rising on an absolute basis, indicate that a potential peak could be seen in the coming weeks with death rates also not as dire as once predicted...