Inside the House of Money: Top Hedge Fund Traders on Profiting in the Global Markets, Revised and Updated

Chapter 13

The Emerging Market Specialist

Marko Dimitrijevi

Everest Capital Miami

Marko Dimitrijevi has been investing in emerging markets (EM) since he was 19 years old. He put on his first EM trade in 1978 and started his own firm, Everest Capital, in 1990, making it one of the oldest hedge funds still operational.

The hedge fund business has changed over the last 15 years, and EM investing is drastically different today than it was in the early 1990s. For one thing, former “emerging markets” such as Portugal or Greece have developed, thereby dropping from the radar screen of managers seeking frontier markets. Today Uruguay, Mongolia, and Pakistan qualify as emerging markets plays, but in another 15 years they may not. So emerging markets investing evolves with the world around it, a world rife with volatility that most EM managers, Dimitrijevi included, are not immune to. Everest experienced a significant drawdown in 1998 on the heels of the simultaneous Russian devaluation and default. Although, unlike many other emerging markets players who got burned in Russia, he did not close the fund, but instead carried on and has since surpassed his high-water mark, meaning that his investors ...