by Scott Ronalds

I’ve gotten hooked on Anthony Bourdain’s CNN show Parts Unknown. If you’ve never seen it, Bourdain travels the world to sample local cuisines and cultures. What makes the show great is that it’s not just about high-end restaurants and smiling dignitaries. Rather, Bourdain finds his way to both the locals’ favourite dives and must visit eateries, and breaks bread with a wide array of the local population. The conversations, questions and drinking aren’t censored. And Bourdain isn’t afraid to eat anything.

I recently binge-watched his visits to Asia and Africa and one of the things that jumped out at me was the size of the growing middle class in places like Vietnam, China, the Philippines and even Senegal. One thing is apparent in all these places: people like to consume. Not just food and drink, but products and experiences too. And as their disposable incomes grow, so does their consumption.

While this isn’t a new revelation, it’s a great reminder that we always want to have exposure to emerging markets in our portfolios – in many cases, parts unknown to you and me. These are the regions that are driving the world’s economic growth.

Steadyhand clients gain exposure to these faster growing economies through our equity funds, which own stocks directly in countries such as Indonesia (Bank Mandiri), Hong Kong (CK Hutchison, Swire Pacific) and Thailand (Bangkok Bank). As well, our managers look for western businesses that derive a growing portion of their sales in these markets. Examples include Unilever (a European consumer products giant with 58% of its business in emerging markets), Ecolab (a U.S.-based developer of technologies for clean water and safe food, two areas of significant growth potential in Asia and Latin America), and even Starbucks (which plans to make China its largest retail market by 2020).

Like eating a bunny head on a stick, investing in the emerging markets can come with a certain level of uneasiness and requires careful research. But taken together, these markets represent too big a region, and opportunity, for investors to ignore.