July 21, 2020

Moore School alumnus Sailesh S. Radha (’03 MBA) utilizes his economics and finance skills to predict the best countries and markets investors should consider.

Radha, who is the founder and CIO of Borealis Global Advisory LLC and the founder, president and investment strategist of Intermarket Research & Analytics LLC, was recently called the “pioneer of medium-term country yield forecast” by Information Management Network, a leading organizer of institutional finance and investment conferences. Radha’s work focuses on developing financial models that enable investors to assess the equity outlooks of different countries.

“Intermarket Research & Analytics LLC is the research arm and intellectual property holder of all data-based country allocation index methodologies, some of which are patented, investment advice and international country equity allocation paradigms provided by Borealis Global Advisory LLC,” Radha said.

Essentially, Borealis Global Advisory LLC and Intermarket Research & Analytics LLC work together to forecast investment data and trends for various markets, particularly, entire countries.

Radha understands that investors struggle with how to position their investment portfolios to yield the most success as there are many considerations related to allocation among asset classes – stocks versus bonds versus real estate – and different industry sectors – technology versus finance versus health care, etc.

Currently, investors are not but should be thinking about which countries to invest in, as some countries’ economies are stronger and more suited for market success than others, Radha said.

“Country diversification is superior to industry diversification for emerging and frontier markets, and therefore, country selection is important for defining equity exposures to equity markets,” Radha said.

Using this information in his latest investment model, Radha has developed an algorithm that provides an approximation tool for investment advisors to predict the investment return markets at the country level and what it may yield over two to eight years.

“This measure helps the investors get exposure to international equities inexpensively through single-country exchange traded funds (ETFs) using a simple allocation mechanism,” Radha said.

This work was recently highlighted in Journal of Portfolio Management, and Radha is publishing a book, Inside Country-Rotation Investing: A Practitioner’s Guide to Asset Allocation and Country Selection, detailing this latest model and its value to the investment industry.

Radha recently received a patent from the United States Patent and Trademark Office on country allocation methodologies using pioneering investment metrics. This gives Radha sole property rights to his intellectual property.

Radha said that many of the courses he participated in while pursuing his MBA at the Moore School – including courses in financial management, investment management, fixed-income securities, derivatives, international macroeconomics, microeconomics, international trade, international financial management, economic forecasting and quantitative methods – are relevant in his daily work. He said he learned quantitative techniques, domain knowledge and econometric skills through all of these courses; unsurprisingly, Radha’s concentration for his MBA was finance and economics.

Emphasizing that his Moore School degree has yielded him a “very, very high” return on investment, Radha said he is “indebted to the mentoring received from [faculty members] Henry Chappell, Shingo Goto, Steve Mann and Chuck Kwok.”

-Erin Mooney