How to read this. These are research views, not a track record. Darmine Capital holds no client or proprietary capital and places no trades. Each stance is the argument of a specific published paper, and the views change as the data does. The most recent full synthesis is Mid-Year Reckoning (August 2026), which scores the eight core economies from the February framework; the others are rated in their own papers.
01
Positioning at a glance
Overweight
- India
- Singapore
- Indonesia
Market weight
- Japan
- Taiwan (TSMC)
- Vietnam
- Malaysia
Underweight
- China
- Korea
- Thailand
Also covered as a portfolio diversifier: the Philippines. Weights describe the group's relative research conviction, not a real portfolio.
02
The view, market by market
| Market | Stance | Our read | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| India | Overweight | The group's strongest conviction in the region. Domestic demand is carrying growth near 6.5%, which leaves India less exposed than its neighbours to the trade war. | India's Domestic Engine |
| Singapore | Overweight | Our defensive anchor. The case rests on services, wealth management, and construction rather than on the chip cycle, which we expect to crest. | The Lion City's Second Act |
| Indonesia | Overweight | A medium-term accumulation case, not a trade. Nickel downstreaming pulls it into the EV supply chain and a 270 million consumer base gives domestic demand a long runway. | The Rupiah Resource Play |
| Japan | Market weight | Trimmed to market weight after a strong run. The structural shift looks real to us, but the easy gains look to be behind it. | Mid-Year Reckoning |
| Taiwan | Long TSMC | We stay constructive on the TSMC franchise while keeping the concentration risk in view. It sits at the center of the global chip supply chain, which also makes its single location that chain's main point of failure. | Taiwan and the Fragile Monopoly |
| Vietnam | Market weight | One of the fastest-growing manufacturing stories in Southeast Asia, held below our strongest convictions because a 40% transshipment penalty on rerouted Chinese content hangs over the export model. | Vietnam at the Crossroads |
| Malaysia | Market weight | The most direct ASEAN exposure to the AI hardware cycle, through back-end packaging and the Johor data-center buildout, with upside capped by China's mature-node oversupply. | The Ringgit Rebuild |
| China | Underweight | Underweight domestic demand. Deflation looks structural and self-reinforcing to us, and we read the yuan's path as a managed, tightly controlled decline that protects exports. | The Yuan's Managed Descent |
| Korea | Underweight | Tactically underweight, with a clear path to add. A high-beta cyclical trade that depends on AI capex holding up and on US trade policy that Seoul does not control. | The Won's Long Winter |
| Thailand | Underweight | We read Thailand as the region's clearest structural laggard. An eroding automotive base, a stalled tourism recovery, and household debt near 90% of GDP keep us underweight equities, duration, and the baht. | The Baht's Lost Decade |
| Philippines | Covered | Held up as a genuine diversifier. Growth near 5.6% on consumption, remittances, and infrastructure gives it an unusually low correlation to the semiconductor capex wave. | Peso Power |
03
How a view gets set
A stance only goes in once the paper behind it has cleared the group's internal read. We revisit the full set when the data shifts: the Mid-Year Reckoning scores our February framework against what actually happened, including where our own forecasts were wrong.