I have long argued that the S&P 500 is an overrated, overused stock market index benchmark, while also admitting it is still one of the best constructed and balanced benchmarks globally. By comparison, the flagship benchmarks of Hong Kong, Canada, Australia, Singapore, and other countries tend to be far more lopsided with industry concentrations in […]
While I am often asked “is now a good time to invest?” in both booming and declining economic times, I have recently been asked more and more about whether the economy is due for its first global recession since 2008-2009, and how to invest in preparation for the next recession. I recently wrote a short […]
Perhaps second to the absolute question of how to make money in the markets, I am next most often asked if and how it is possible to “beat the market”. When asking “how to beat the market”, one also needs to answer two parts of that question: “what do you mean by ‘the market’?”, and […]
The main reason to buy a stock is to get significantly more money out of it than you put into it. By “significantly more”, the profit you make from a stock should not only be more than interest you would have earned putting the same money into a bank deposit or bond, but also compensate […]
Here is a table listing some of the best performing and worst performing country stock markets as of the beginning of December 2018, with the first two columns showing 2018 year-to-date and 3-year total returns by country respectively. The next two columns show Price/Earnings ratios and historical earnings growth statistics by country. I chose to […]
Bloomberg recently published another article titled “Where to Invest $1,000,000 right now“, where six different experts provided six different opinions on where they would invest the million. Not surprisingly, the experts they asked tended to recommend investing in assets their companies sold or serviced (for example, the one who said investing in Vietnamese property was […]
If you’re in Hong Kong this Friday, September 14th, I hope to see you at “The Future is Female” conference at Campfire in Taikoo from 9am to 7pm. This time, I’ll be speaking about investing in stocks and real estate, and some of the most important questions women should ask when choosing where to save […]
I’ve been speaking at several ETF conferences this year, and was a bit surprised to see at one event most of the audience raising their hand as users of ETFs, but then most putting their hands down when asked if they traded ETFs listed on any exchanges in Asia. For easy reference, I wanted to […]
MSCI’s China A-share inclusion is one of the many themes I’ve been hearing over and over again this year. As one of the world’s largest and most respected brands in benchmarking investment portfolios, this move means that trillions of dollars of American and European retirement funds will now be required to buy more Chinese stocks, […]
I’ve spoken and written extensively on real estate investment trusts (REITs), but just came across these two charts comparing the performance of US equity REITs vs mortgage REITs, and the long-term total return of US REITs vs physical real estate. Chart #1: Performance of equity REITs vs mortgage REITs Equity REITs own properties, and collect […]