Whenever Big Media sounds off about the Man Cave, my testosterone begins to boil.
It's funny, they say, how some regular guy has carved out a bit of space in his basement to play Guitar Hero III, watch baseball all weekend and plaster his walls with photos of NASCAR great, Dale Earnhardt. Here, the Man Cave dweller can smoke cigars with his buds, pig-out on pizza and swill cold beer.
Yes, it's another feel-good goof from Big Media about the American working stiff making it through his humdrum, so-called life.
But what are the real implications of this Man Cave scourge? Or, with a riff on Freud, "What do men really want?"
It's a longing, my friends, a deep ache in our male DNA for the next frontier. We want places to explore, a dash of risk and the big payoff. With the Man Cave, escape replaces exploration, risk becomes the thrill of getting away from the wife and kid, and the big payoff is falling asleep in front of the TV.
The Man Cave is a Big Media punch line to a deep, deep yearning in our souls for the frontier.
Throughout history, the frontier attracted seekers who believed the game was rigged against them. Regardless of how hard they worked, some crook further up the food chain got rich off their back-breaking labor.
In the age of the Man Cave, self reliance means bagging your own groceries at the checkout. The American pioneering spirit has been packaged into eco-tourism replete with safety helmets, life vests and plenty of #20 sunscreen. And what about that chance of striking it big on a rich piece of bottom land? Well that's turned into a long line at the Home Depot garden center...your credit card in hand.
So where can you turn to scratch that itch for the next frontier?
For investors, the answer is simple: Frontier Markets.
Frontier Markets are flourishing all the over the world. And as long as the media continues to portray them as hot spots of carnage, chaos and corruption, investing in Frontier Markets will remain one of the great overlooked investments opportunities of our time
For proof-positive, look no further than the S&P/IFC Global Frontier Markets index. From October 2001 to September 2007, it surged 553%. Even a bigger shocker is that the index includes companies from Bangladesh, Botswana, Columbia, Ghana, Ecuador, Pakistan, Morocco and Peru.
The growth in Frontier Markets is not an economic blip: The S&P/IFC Global Frontier Markets index has returned an average of 37% over the past 5 years.
Morgan Stanley Capital International is the company behind the MSCI Frontier Markets Indices. These indices cover 19 foreign countries such a Bulgaria, Croatia, Kenya, Mauritius, Kuwait, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. Check out the chart below...
On March 5, 2008 Merrill Lynch launched its new Merrill Lynch Frontier Index, which includes 50 stocks from the underdeveloped frontier markets such as the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Nigeria, Morocco, Croatia, Pakistan, Kazakhstan and Vietnam. Clearly, Merrill Lynch knows something most investors don't.
Following on the heels of Merrill Lynch, Barclays Global Investors announced its new BGI Frontier Markets Fund on March 18, 2008. It provides exposure to 16 Frontier Markets including United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Slovenia, Romania, Bulgaria and Estonia.
So as you can see, the thrill of the frontier is alive and kicking. And that big payoff? Well, the first thing you need to do is see the light of day.
--Irwin Greenstein
