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Strategies & Market Trends : Asia Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Real Man who wrote (1928)	2/5/1998 11:55:00 AM
From: Mohan Marette	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9980

Vi any idea how the U.S market is in comparison the GDP? Seems like a good predictor/indicator.

To: Real Man who wrote (1928)	2/5/1998 4:34:00 PM
From: Stitch	Respond to of 9980

Vi- Many thanks for pointing that one out. Also the hint on the yahoo links. best, Stitch

To: Real Man who wrote (1928)	2/11/1998 1:16:00 AM
From: Real Man	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9980

I'm quite interested in buying Asia. Have been eyeing and playing Japan for a while. I think it is undervalued. Taking Hitachi as an example (the company contributing roughly 2% to Japan's GDP). Roughly it costs 10x less than GE, based on long-term price/sales, price/book ratios. P/e is a more short-term issue; yeah, p/e of 38 is a bit high, but with a margin of roughly 1% that's OK. So, this is a margins play. If conditions were to change, margin increase from 1 to 6% would produce enormous earnings growth. There are many more such companies in Japan. However, with the regional slide, I'm in doubt now (new bad loans?). Everybody here seems to be buying SEA countries - Malaysia, Korea, Thailand, Hong Kong, etc. -stock markets which recently dropped. Why are we buying? Is it because Templeton or others said so? Is this recent huge run-up the end of the bear or a dead cat bounce? I don't know where to find valuation measures for these countries, and I'm quite interested in those. This occasional Malaysian figure (stock val/GDP of 135% at the minimum), at least, seems alarming (congratulations to everybody who bought EWM before the recent run-up - this is end of 1997 figure). After all, we are in the market as buyers for countries which are likely to fall in recession or depression. This could mean that companies could be losing money, and be valued according to their book value... I can't so far find links to overall valuation of these markets, so if people here know much more about these issues than I do (and I don't), I would appreciate very much if someone posts. -Vi