The Iran war is an unprecedented crisis but South-east Asia is better placed to handle it.

Synopsis: Every second Friday of the month, The Straits Times’ senior columnist Ravi Velloor distils 45 years of experience covering the Asian continent, with expert guests.

The US-Israeli assault on Iran, which led to the effective closure of the Straits of Hormuz, has seized up many Asian economies which are seeing rising fuel prices, soaring airline ticket costs and leaving restaurants short of cooking fuel.

But South-east Asia, with memories of the Asian Financial Crisis of the late 1990s still fresh in memory is better placed macro-economically to tackle the crisis - evidenced in investors’ confidence in stocks such as DBS, SIA and OCBC.

In this wide-ranging episode, host Ravi Velloor speaks with Thilan Wickramasinghe, head of research at Maybank Securities and an expert on the interplay of geopolitics, macro-economics and the stock market. They unpack the full dimensions of the crisis before discussing how Asia is likely to fare when it ends, as it must some day.

Mr Wickramasinghe offers some advice: It has paid off for investors to be long on stocks, he says, and there is a case to keep some gold in your portfolio, as well as energy stocks.

Highlights (click/tap above)

1:38 A Michelle Yeoh, Di Caprio-style crisis

8:16 South-east Asia is better placed than other regions

14:09 DBS, SIA - why some stocks do better than the rest

15:33 Opportunities for investors in this crisis

17:59 Post-War realities to watch for

21:10 Equities will never go out of fashion

Read Ravi's columns: https://str.sg/3xRP

Follow Ravi on X: https://twitter.com/RaviVelloor

Host: Ravi Velloor (velloor@sph.com.sg)

Produced and edited by: Fa’izah Sani

Executive producer: Ernest Luis