Hi Les, (Mostly Off Topic)
I don't know anything specific about Korea. Indonesia, in my opinion, is not worth investing in right now, unless you can take advantage of the rupiah. It might be worth buying around 15,000 per dollar, but it probably will only slide down there again if a new round of rioting occurs and/or there arise questions over who is running the country. The banks in Indonesia are near ruin.
In order: Indonesia is very poor, Thailand is poor, and Malaysia still has too much of poverty to make me confident in their economies. For one thing they depend too much on tourism and foreign trade. The troubling fact for me is that its native citizens don't earn enough money to support their economies. Elsewhere, however, Singapore is quite well-off and might have some great bargains at this time. Likewise Japan. Sorry I can't comment on Korea, Hong Kong or Taiwan.
But my opinion is I would not invest "in Asia" at this time. Your friend the fund manager is probably telling you that now is the time to buy and make big money when the recovery comes in. But what is on the horizon? If China devalues their currency Asia will have another bloodbath. Right now you can probably find more bargains in this latest downturn on Wall Street than you can in the Pacific Rim. I think the time to buy in Asia will come long after the bottom is reached, even after a fairly long period of consolidation at the bottom. There's been a severe downpour already, but hey, maybe it's still the rainy season, you know? Good luck.
As for PM today, the downside risk from 9 3/8 is IMO about 7-10%, which in the current market is about as good as can be hoped for, a positive argument for not selling here. |
