In this week's Stansberry Investor Hour, Dan welcomes Harvey Sawikin to the show. Harvey is the co-founder and principal of Firebird Management, a fund that focuses on investing in emerging markets, primarily in Eastern Europe.

Harvey kicks things off by stating that emerging market investors don't pay enough attention to politics compared with macroeconomics. He says that you can glean insight into how a country could develop if you understand its politics, especially in cases where there's new leadership. But it's still important to understand the macroeconomics, as those have been red flags for otherwise promising markets. And he shares why folks would want to invest in emerging markets despite strong growth in American companies...

I understand Americans look at it and they say, "Why should I bother with emerging markets when the U.S. is doing so well?" The thing I would say to that is that things can change... Between 1982 and 2000, the U.S. was the place to be. And then for 10 years, the U.S. gave no performance at all. But emerging markets were skyrocketing, and [for] people who had some diversification into emerging markets – not just emerging markets – the non-dollar currencies went skyrocketing. The euro got as high as 140. [It] can happen again.

Next, Harvey explains how emerging markets view the dollar. If a country exports commodities, it might not care about the strength of the dollar. Additionally, some exporting countries might prefer to have a slightly weaker currency to look more appealing compared with U.S. companies, so traders use the local currency to invest in these markets. Harvey then gives his background with investing in AI companies (with one that went from $8 a share to $240 a share) and his thoughts on the technology...

It could be that in the end of the day, the winners from AI are not the [large-language model] producers... It will be [the] companies – if they can get it at a cheap enough cost – that will be able to use it. Just think about if AI customer service was really good and you didn't need call centers, and it did a great job... There have been some studies that [showed] that a really good AI customer service actually converts people to purchasing better than a lot of the call centers. So it may be that Main Street's the big winner, and it's not OpenAI and it's not Anthropic because... they're too easily substituted for each other.

Finally, Harvey informs listeners that it's OK to be cautious during the AI frenzy. No one knows where the peak of the hype will be, but it might be beneficial to avoid throwing all your money at AI (especially AI companies where you can't even tell what their product is). Harvey believes that patience is the key to successfully navigating the markets, and when everyone is bullish, it's even more crucial. But at the end of the day, it's up to the individual investor – not someone pushing a stock or fund – to determine when they want to get into a position...

It's up to the investor to decide. [The private-equity funds are] not going to tell you this is a bad time. You, the [limited partner], have to make your own independent judgment as to whether it's a good idea to do private equity right now or VC right now, or invest in AI right now. No one is going to help you, and one's going to protect you from your own desire to be part of the big bull market.

Click on the image below to watch the video interview with Harvey right now. For the audio version, click "Listen" above.

(Additional past episodes are located here.)

The transcript is coming soon.

This Week's Guest

Harvey Sawikin is the co-founder and principal of Firebird Management, which was formed in 1994. Before founding Firebird, he was a clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals and a mergers and acquisitions specialist at the law firm of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. He's also a lead manager of Firebird's Eastern Europe and Russia funds, and he serves on the Management Boards of the Amber private-equity funds.

Harvey is a graduate of Columbia University (Magna Cum Laude) and Harvard Law School (Cum Laude), where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. He is a member of the visiting committees of both the Photographs and the Modern and Contemporary Art departments of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and a member of the board of directors of Film at Lincoln Center.