Stan, Good note. I doubt that China will be able to demand Yuans in payment for a decade or so, but it will happen. The basics of trade economics sometimes look bassackwards to me. I see us allowing the Chinese to work for next to nothing, using their resources to produce cheap products for us. In return, we send them pieces of paper that Alan Da Printer kicks out like Sunday New York Times on steroids. If we use Canadian wood pulp to print the paper, we give up almost nothing. <VBG>
The Swissie is great, but probably not big enough to dominate. Of course, the fact that their banks don't repatriate assets to heirs once account holders are killed by ruthless govts. makes their currency ever stronger. <g>
If you are looking at Chinese cos., here are my favorites: CHEUY, the largest real estate holder in the area. They also own most of HUWHY, which is a good choice on its own. I also like JARLY, though it has been a vain hope for years. Great assets with tangled financials. Sort of like Enron. <g> But Jardine-Matheson is the original Noble House of James Clavell fame and has a lot of face in Asia, even after bugging out to Bermuda. Heck, they just wanted to buy their Stanley Works Tools without a tariff. <g>
CHN is my favorite closed end fund in the area, selling at a huge discount. I like it for its small cap dominance and its continued outperformance. GCH is also good and the PE ratio is miniscule. But they have more of a mid cap slant. TDF, TCH and JFC all seem to go for higher PE stocks than I prefer and haven't performed all that well. |
