This inaugural episode of The Long and Short of It with Ian McKnight kicks off with a reflection on a news-filled Christmas period where geopolitics started the year in explosive fashion and markets started to digest the aftermath.

Today's episode features Aoifinn Devitt, Senior Investment Advisor at Moneta, as a guest and we discuss topics as diverse as the impact of geopolitics, UK growth, interest rates and the need for the triumph of hope over nihilism!

We conduct a health check on US equity markets, looking at valuations and of course the Mag 7, tracing their fortunes along the course of the year, and check in on how stocks such as ‪@tesla‬ have forged their own path and how the "average may lie" when it comes to both earning expectations and returns

Everaldo Franca is CEO at PPS Portfolio Performance, a role he has held since 1996. He has deep experience with advising pensions and institutional investors in Brazil.

Our conversation starts with his upbringing in Sao Paolo and the straitened circumstances wrought by the economy that forced various job changes and a combination of academic and professional pursuits. We discuss what it means to build one's career in an economy under strain, with high inflation, unpredictability and volatility.

We discuss then the process behind starting PPS Portfolio Perfomance and the proof of concept that led to traction for the business. We end with a detailed discussion of the challenges facing pension funds and other institutions in Brazil at a time when interest rates for domestic short term rates.

Series 5 of 2025 is kindly sponsored by Diamond Hill. Diamond Hill invests on behalf of clients through a shared commitment to its valuation-driven investment principles, long-term perspective, capacity discipline and client alignment. An independent active asset manager with significant employee ownership, Diamond Hill’s investment strategies include differentiated US and non-US equity, alternative long-short equity and fixed income.

Matias Guajardo Marchant who is a Portfolio Manager Farmland at Toesca Asset Management in Santiago. He is an Agronomist with a career fully dedicated to agriculture, firmly believing that this sector is one of the fundamental pillars of both the Chilean and global economy. He is a mentor with Startup Chile and has held a series of financial roles throughout his career.

Our discussion dives into the nature of agriculture as an asset class and the potential to structure investments in high-value, sustainable agriculture for institutional investors. Matias describes the favorable political and economic backdrop to this strategy in Chile today where the economy is open and there are numerous trade agreements in effect.

We discuss the wave of focus on sustainability and how this can enhance the return for investors as well as how the sustainability impacts are measured. Finally we reflect on some of the learnings that he has internalized over the course of his career - including, memorably, the notion that if you look after the small money, the big money will look after itself as well as the importance of patience, long term thinking, and strategic planning.

This podcast is appearing as our penultimate episode in our special Latin American voices focus series.