In the "Alice in Wonderland" world of modern financial markets, where miscreants (governments and their "sovereign" obligations) are more highly rated than the jurors (global business corporations and their shares), it's vital to think about the meaning of quality and "quality control" in portfolio management.

Human beings are strange. In our lives we pride ourselves on our pursuit of high quality. (By the way, it's not at all uncommon -thought it's certainly perverse- to lust after low quality). We define ourselves by the quality of our houses, the quality of the clothes we wear, the quality of our friends and the quality of the coffee we drink. Even the quality of our dogs.

We all know we're judged on our own qualities by others. Molière's Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme sets upon an absurd quest to become "a man of quality" ("Un Homme de Qualité"). Jay Gatsby projects quality by throwing magnificent parties in a palace of a house to find Daisy and realize his dreams. My son regularly receives letters from his Dad on surrounding himself with friends with desirable "qualities".

Like mirrors, we reflect the qualities -good and bad- of those around us. All club members (for aspiration) and house-buyers (for security) know the importance of quality.

How strange then, that in matters financial, we seem to cling to quite another set of rules, loosely described as "speculative".

David Fuller's view GTI specialises in global growth stocks, many of which are leveraged to the emerging middle class. Consequently this report is likely to be of interest to most Fullermoney subscribers who will be familiar with many of the companies discussed but perhaps not all of them.