Baltic Tiger

Categories: Econ, Trading, Index Funds

Baltic Tiger is a title assigned the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to capture enthusiasm created during the period from 2000 to 2007, during which they enjoyed double-digit annual economic growth. They were "tigers" in their growth during that period…i.e. simply put, they were good. Waaaay better economic performers than The Baltic Slug, which just froze and was eaten by a bird.

The term is based on Four Asian Tigers, Tatra Tiger, and Celtic Tiger, which were used to describe the economic booms that occurred in Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan (Four Asian Tigers), Slovakia (Tatra Tiger) and The Republic of Ireland (Celtic Tiger). All these areas, like the Baltic Tiger, went through periods of great economic boom.

Referring to the Four Asian Tigers, tiger was picked as the moniker of these booming economies because a tiger is a ferocious beast, native to East Asia, and alludes to ferocious economic growth of these four countries. The other "Tigers" were just a play on the Four Asian Tigers title.

Oddly enough, real tigers are not located in any of these countries. The last wild tiger seen in Korea was in 1922. And Augusta in 2018.

Related or Semi-related Video

Finance: What is a Country Basket (Index...30 Views

00:00

Finance, a la shmoop. What is a country basket index fund?

00:07

All right we're picking daisies, marigolds, lilies so uh how do we [Pictures of flowers]

00:12

rephrase in Italian? Like, we want to fill a portfolio basket with just stocks [Pouring a glass of red wine]

00:17

representing the overall financial health of Italy. Is Italy healthy? While

00:23

they smoke a lot they drink a lot of wine they eat a bunch of pasta but there

00:27

always seems to be a woman from some small village who's celebrating her [Old woman at a birthday party]

00:30

117th birthday over there. Well a country basket is just an index fund of

00:36

stocks representing a country. Like we're doing Korea... South we're gonna have

00:42

in that basket dunno some Samsung, a load of Daewoo, a hunk of Hyundai and some [Company stocks being added to the basket]

00:48

nice barbecue on the side. That'd be our Korean country basket and it's a good

00:52

basket to fill if you're just bullish on a country but not really sure which

00:56

flower on which to place your bets. It's like instead of trying to decide between [The stocks in the basket turn into flowers]

01:00

roulette or poker or slots... Well you just buy stock in Las Vegas

01:05

Sands you know you bet on the entire casino, and bueno Fortuna you know good [Someone checking their cards in a casino]

01:10

luck there pal, doesn't the house always win? Yeah so why do people keep going there?...

Find other enlightening terms in Shmoop Finance Genius Bar(f)