Farewell to the Indiana Jones of emerging markets
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LONDON (Callaway Climate Insights) — My first and only interview with Mark Mobius was on the beach outside the Martinez Hotel in Cannes in the South of France in the early 1990s. I was a young European reporter with Bloomberg and he was the head of emerging markets for Franklin Templeton, stopping in to an investor conference to give the keynote while on his way to Russia.
“If you want to ask a few questions, come with me,” he said, as he strode out of the lobby and across the famed Croisette, shed his dress shirt and shoes and plopped down on a beach chair. For 10 minutes we discussed global markets as he basked in the sun. Then just as quickly, he put on his shirt and shoes, hailed a taxi and was off to the airport.
Mobius was always on the move; averaging some 300 days a year on the road visiting companies in Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa and Latin America on his Franklin Templeton private jet. For a while, the confirmed bachelor with an iconic bald head was known as the Indiana Jones of emerging markets.
Many of the picks that led his flagship Templeton fund to average annual returns of more than 13% over 30 years, according to Bloomberg, were energy companies trying to power the economies of their “emerging” countries. He was a big advocate of renewable energy and its potential, especially in Asia.
Mobius was a markets fanatic until the day he died this week at the age of 89, and only last month wrote on his Substack that global markets would endure and rebound from the Iran war once the extent of its duration became clear.
Emerging markets are the most volatile of investments and always subject to geopolitical winds. The emerging markets of today were the same ones when I interviewed Mobius in the 1990s, indeed the same as the 1890s. Always emerging, never emerged.
But Mobius made them colorful; eternally full of promise. And he made a lot of money for his followers while doing it. Safe travels.
Don’t forget to contact me directly if you have suggestions or ideas at dcallaway@callawayclimateinsights.com.
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Clean energy funds’ strong quarter dwarfed by fossil fuel gains
. . . . Despite March’s volatility, it was a strong quarter for clean energy funds — just not as strong as fossil fuel funds, writes Mark Hulbert. The average clean and sustainable energy fund rose 6.4% in the first three months of the year. The average fossil fuel fund rose 36.7%. Perhaps not surprising given the Iran war’s impact on oil prices. But here’s the unusual thing. In both cases, most of the gains in both sectors came in January and February, before the bombing of Iran began. Hulbert explains why.
Thursday’s subscriber insights
How Europe’s summer energy crisis could threaten governments
. . . . . In Ireland, two weeks of increasingly violent protests over fuel costs have led to a motion of confidence in the Irish parliament. In Germany and Spain, governments are asking European regulators for breaks on fuel taxes and climate fees as prices soar and supplies of aviation fuel run low.
And in the UK, the Labour’s government’s environmental pledge not to restart North Sea oil licensing is hanging by a thread. The government instead promised some £600 million ($814 million) to engineering giant Rolls-Royce to build small nuclear reactors, which could take years, even if it ever works.
Welcome to Europe’s coming summer energy crisis, which has every chance of toppling governments and shifting elections if it develops as many energy experts and economies think it might.
While global stock markets are behaving as if nothing is wrong, regaining momentum toward records as the AI train resumes its one-way journey, energy markets tell a different story.
Oil prices, even at these lofty levels, might still not be factoring in a prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Some airports report only a few weeks left of jet fuel, as they compete with local militaries trying to bulk up defenses because of the war.
If prices really start to bite, elected officials are first in the crosshairs. That’s why so many countries are now slashing fuel taxes. Here in the UK, Prime Minister Keir Starmer must decide soon whether to keep a planned and budgeted fuel tax hike — the first in years — or abandon it to fight prices.
It’s hard to see he really has a choice, if Labour want to keep their leadership jobs.
Editor’s picks: How China powers the world; plus, Americans’ view of the environment is bleak ahead of Earth Day
Watch the video: China is the world’s biggest producer of rare earths — the minerals sometimes called the “oil of the 21st century.” We need rare earths for tech like mobile phones, but is the environmental price of mining them too high? In 2025, BBC China Correspondent Laura Bicker visited two of the biggest production areas in the world. She saw the economic benefits the new industry can bring, but also the damage caused by the toxic chemicals used in mining rare earths.
Americans’ view of environment poor ahead of Earth Day
Americans’ assessments of the environment are particularly bleak ahead of Earth Day, as a record-low 35% offer a positive rating of the environment’s quality and two-thirds say it is worsening. That’s according to a new Gallup poll, the results of which were released this week. Wednesday, April 22 is Earth Day. The first Earth Day was in 1970, when an estimated 20 million Americans came out to the streets, parks and civic gathering places to support a global environmental movement and protest the impact on the natural world of 150 years of industrial development. The theme for Earth Day 2026 is “Our Power, Our Planet.” Gallup says more than three in five U.S. adults, 63%, think the government is not doing enough to protect the environment, and most believe environmental protection should be prioritized over economic growth (58%) and development of U.S. energy sources (57%). Gallup’s March 2-18 annual environment poll also finds that of eight specific environmental problems, water pollution and safe drinking water are the most worrisome to Americans. Sharp partisan differences continue in all of these views of the environment, Gallup said.
Words to live by . . . .
“In the face of impending catastrophe, whose warning signs are already unbearably disastrous, weak action is unwise. No action is dangerous.” — William Ruto, president of Kenya.