Asia, unlike major Western markets, already suffered from an economic depression in 1997-1998 as country after country was sucked into a massive currency and debt crisis smashed into the region.

Asia’s quick response to the crisis – mainly thanks to China – combined with easy credit financing from the West helped to lessen the severity and duration of the blow.

Currently, the FTSE Asia-Pacific Large-Cap Index (excluding Japan) yields 3.8% while the Tokyo Nikkei yields 2.7%. Both sectors yield more than local government bond markets.

The S&P 500 Index currently yields 3% or slightly below the yield on benchmark ten-year Treasury bonds.

Amazingly, Japanese stocks barely yielded 1% for years until the Nikkei began to hemorrhage starting in 2004. Since then, many Japanese large and small-cap companies have boosted dividends over the last five years, including share buybacks.

Some world-class companies in Japan continue to pay attractive dividends, including Canon (3.4%), Nintendo (5.5%), Nippon Oil (3.6%) and Takeda Pharmaceuticals (4.8%).

What’s truly amazing is how for many decades the United States continued to raise dividend payouts while emerging markets paid little or nothing to shareholders. Now that trend is changing amid the worst credit deflation in 75 years…as banks and other companies chop or eliminate dividends to conserve cash.

Dividends in the MSCI Asia Pacific Index are derived from companies in 14 countries with the top ten dividend-paying stocks accounting for about 20% of total dividends paid. In contrast, the top ten dividend stocks in the S&P 500 Index accounted for almost 33% of all dividends paid by that index in 2007.

According to research compiled by the Matthews Asia Pacific Equity Income Fund, between 2002 and 2007 dividends paid by the constituents in the MSCI Asia Pacific Index grew at a compounded annualized rate of 24% compared with 10% for the S&P 500 Index. That trend is accelerating since 2008 as Asian stocks maintain or boost payouts while American companies reduce or eliminate them altogether.

At some point in the future, it’s inevitable that currencies in Asia will be revalued vis-à-vis the American dollar. That makes dividend investing in the Pacific even more compelling as the total return equation grows more rewarding for long-term investors.

Source:  Increasing Dividends, Higher Total Return Mean Asian Equities Might Be Worth a Look

Agora Financial’s 5-Minute Forecast reports that “in terms of major stock indexes around the world… there are few places to hide. The Euro Stoxx 50, a gauge of the big indexes in the eurozone, is down 24% this year. Germany’s DAX has fallen 20%. The CAC in France is down 22%. Britain’s FTSE is doing the ‘best,’ down 15% YTD.”In case you were wondering, the MSCI Asia Pacific Index is down 13% since the beginning of the year, the Shanghai Composite is down around 50% this year, Indian markets have fallen about 40%, Japan’s Nikkei 225 is down 12% year-to-date, Australia is down about 16%, Germany is down 20%, India down 32% and China is down 48% YTD. To name a few.

And, closer to home, the S&P 500 is down about 15% year-to-date, and the Dow is off about 14%, which when coupled with the ugly fact that they dollar is down about 7%, means that foreigners are getting whacked harder for investing in America than Americans! And I thought Americans were stupid! Hahahaha!

The Bank for International Settlements figures, “The current market turmoil in the world’s main financial centers is without precedent in the postwar period. Given the possibility of such a worsening economic and financial environment, it would not be surprising if asset valuations also came under further pressure,” made worse by an “uncomfortably long period of high inflation, along with slower growth.”

This is pretty gloomy news, which may explain why the latest survey of consumer sentiment from Reuters/University of Michigan fell to 56.4 in June, which shows that Americans are the gloomiest since 1980. And for good reason, too, as inflation in prices is going to keep getting higher and higher, because inflation in prices always follows inflation in the money supply, and money just keeps getting created by the idiot central banks of the world by the literal ton every day, as we learn from Ty Andros of TedBits newsletter, who gives us the Ugly, ugly News (UUN) that “The AVERAGE amount of M3 central bank money and credit creation is simply astonishing. It is clocking in at an average annual rate of 23%. Yes, that’s right, 23%.” Doug Casey of the International Speculator newsletter is a little more conservative, and says, “All over the world, but especially in the U.S., currencies are being inflated radically; M3 is rising at about 18% per year.”

To show the horror of that, Mr. Andros notes that a 23% rise in the money supplies, “Using the rule of 72…means those money supplies in one form or another are doubling on average every 3.13 years.” I involuntarily pee in my pants! Doubling the money supply in three years! This is insane! We are freaking doomed!

In case you were interested in knowing if there were any countries that are not a bunch of dirtbag, fiat-currency, inflationist morons, the answer is, unfortunately, “no”. But Mike Hewitt of DollarDaze.org writes, “The Swiss Franc was the best-performing currency of the 20th century, losing only 80% of its value.” Hahahaha!

And it is all going to get worse, too, and people will get more angry, and some of them will remember that The Magnificent Mogambo (TMM) always said that elementary mathematics and history prove that the majority of stock market investors must always lose in the long run so that a small minority of investors can make some meager gains (sometimes), and this losing majority must also pay the rapacious Wall Street financial services industry huge, huge, HUGE sums so that fancy-suited sharpies can make a lot of money ALL the time by “managing” all that money and making a complete failure of it, and the sting is mostly felt because the losing majority must also pay the government lots of taxes and fees levied on all the various handlings of this money, and they will blame me, like it is my fault that simple mathematics makes it inescapably true, or that the stupid, socialist/communist/fascist way that they vote has created a ravenous, cancerous monster that is going to destroy us all by necessitating that the Federal Reserve keep creating all the money and credit that the government needs to borrow, and these “majority losers” will sue the living hell out of their little “financial planner” or “account executive” that told such a lying piece of stupidity!

In short, the biggest and most damaging lie of all is that everyone can retire on the money they “invest for the long term” in the stock market. It can’t be done. It is mathematically impossible. You will lose more in purchasing power (as central bank monetary inflation destroys the currency by printing enough to finance the higher stock prices) than you will ever net in gains, and so the best, absolute best thing that can happen to the majority of investors is that they will invest the equivalent of a whole pizza today to get back a half a pizza when they retire, instead of merely a tenth of a pizza, if that! Hahaha!

Such are the just desserts of people stupid enough, with a media stupid enough, with an educational system stupid enough, and a government both stupid and corrupt enough to create a boom with a fiat currency, and to actually make a bet with everything they have that such a preposterous monetary system will not go bust, although it has, 100% of the time in all of history when any other country full of people stupid enough, with a media stupid enough, with an educational system stupid enough, and a government both stupid and corrupt enough to create a boom with a fiat currency.

The good news is that the astute can succeed where all others fail by merely buying gold and silver the whole time that the government is doing this, which is the easy way (”The Mogambo Way (TMW)). And we all love it when it is easy!

Well, I do anyway. And since it is easy to stop here, I will.

Well, after I make a pitch for buying gold, silver and oil. Now I’ll shut up. Just remember what I said. Okay, now I’ll REALLY shut up.

Source: The Biggest Loser of Purchasing Power

For investors in one uniquely positioned company it could mean extraordinary growth in the years ahead… starting precisely at midnight 2 June 2008.

Before I reveal why, let me explain why the boom times in the Gulf are here to stay for the foreseeable future…

Take Qatar…

Like its neighbours the Gulf emirate is in the midst of a massive economic boom.

As the world’s biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas, demand for LNG is soaring because the stuff is still undervalued compared to oil.

To produce all that gas to satisfy global demand, Qatar is bringing in hundreds of thousands of foreign workers to work in its booming energy and construction industries. They come from India and Pakistan and from the poorer Arab countries like Egypt to seek their fortunes…

Of course, if you have ever visited the region, you’ll know the Gulf States rely on cheap imported labour to keep their economies going.

But we’re seeing something on an entirely different scale right now.

So much so Qatar’s population has risen by a staggering 90% since 2004 to more than 1.4 million. It’s up 18% over the last year alone!

If you want to see the very definition of a boom town, look no further.

An economy growing six times faster than Britain

The Qataris are raking it in!

The economy grew by 14% last year and will repeat that performance this year, according to IMF estimates. The average income is expected to hit $80,211 this year – almost double what it was just four years ago.

What are the chances of us ever seeing something like that happen here in Europe? Pretty darn slim!

I’ll put that into perspective…

The IMF estimates the average personal income here in the U.K. was $45,301 in 2007 and will reach $48,071 this year. It expects the British economy to grow by 2.3% this year. So, if we’re lucky and the U.K. economy doesn’t get derailed by the credit crunch and plunging property prices, we’ll be a little bit richer than the Qatari’s were four years ago.

Not only that, the country’s vast gas reserves are expected to last for another century, so this story still has a long, long way to go. That boom is also paying-off big time for investors. Qatar’s share market hit a 28-month high on Tuesday.

You can see why I’d rather put my money down on the Gulf over the long-term… and you should too.

Because it’s not just Qatar…

The “backdoor” way in to the booming Gulf

We’re seeing a huge boom right across the Gulf region, but most international investors still haven’t got a clue on how to buy into this boom. Many think it’s too hard and risky getting exposure to the Gulf’s markets.

But it’s easier than you might think…

Here at Profit Hunter we’ve been well placed to profit from this phenomenon since December last year.

The company we’re invested in is making a fortune hoovering-up the region’s petrodollars and re-investing them in undervalued Western companies for the last 25 years.

It’s recently been investing a lot closer to home as well – their Gulf Growth Capital fund is investing in high-growth companies in the region.

It gives you a brilliant “backdoor” entry into the booming Gulf. But I’d act quickly if I were you…

Why you should buy in BEFORE 2 June

You see, not only is this company extremely undervalued, on Tuesday it announced that it will become one of seven constituent companies included on the MSCI Bahrain Index from 2 June.

The MSCI indices are the world’s leading family of global financial indices and are widely tracked by professional investors. The move is brilliant news for our company…

Why? Based on its market cap this potential goldmine will have a 17.8% weighting in the index and therefore automatically gets included in both the Frontier Markets Index and GCC Index.

This means investment funds that track these indices will HAVE to buy in. And with international investors increasingly interested in the Gulf and in the so-called “frontier markets”… this could give its share price a real punch.

If you’re looking to profit from the region’s energy boom without investing directly in the volatile energy markets, I think this is probably the smartest investment you can make.

Here’s how all the exclusive details can be yours.

Regards

Manraaj Singh
Editor
Profit Hunter

Source: One Emerging Gulf Market Stock About To Boom

Although they’ve had an incredible run, we’ve got to remember there’s a reason we still call them emerging markets. With that status comes a significant amount of risk. I don’t care what’s happened over the past five years; I care what’s going to happen over the next two. What goes up must come down. The greater the upward run, the greater the risk in the future.

Just take a look at the chart above. Over the past three months the Dow has declined 5%. The MSCI India ETF (INP:NYSE) is off 15% and the FTSE/China Xinhua Index (FXI:NYSE) has fallen more than 40%. That’s a lot of risk. These emerging markets truly are emerging, and there’s going to be a lot of volatility.

There is, however, one emerging market that performs like a developed one: Russia. While India and China were getting crushed, the Russia Market Vectors ETF (RSX:NYSE) has done just as well as the Dow. After a quick correction of about 15%, the Russian stock market has resumed its climb and is down a mere 5% over the past three months.

When it comes to emerging markets like India and China, I’ve taken a “buyer beware” approach. Thanks in part to Vladimir Putin’s “stabilization” policies, Russia has avoided the volatility of other emerging markets and shown it has a less risk. Learn how to take advantage of the safest emerging market here.

Good investing,

Andrew Mickey
Editor in chief, BreakAway Investor

Introducing… The World’s Most Dangerous Man

In less than a decade his empire has placed the world’s economy in a stranglehold, and now he’s gunning directly for the United States. Who is he? What is he doing? How can you protect yourself from his dangerous game? Learn all you need to know in my exclusive on-location report, including how you can pull in a potential 493% once the dust settles. This may be the most important letter you read all year…

So far this year jitters over America have left no region of the world untouched. Indeed, while the MSCI USA index is down by 6.5% this year, the MSCI Emerging Market and Emerging Asia indices have lost 8% and 12% respectively in dollar terms, despite a strong rally over the past few days; India, often touted as one of the safer developing markets – owing to its relatively low exposure to exports – is down 28%.

Asian stockmarkets have been unable to decouple, because as global investors have expanded their range in recent years, they have deepened the connections between various markets, says Joanna Slater in The Wall Street Journal. And in rocky times, institutional investors ditch riskier assets, such as Asian and emerging stocks, to cover losses or fund withdrawals in other areas.

Capital can flow where it likes, so “if there’s an upset in one part of the world, it affects all other markets”, says Jonathan Compton of Bedlam Asset Management. The bottom line is that in times of crisis, correlations between stockmarkets increase “and there is nowhere to hide”, says Prieur du Plessis on Seekingalpha.com.

So much for stockmarket decoupling; how about economic decoupling? Asia ex-Japan’s export growth has held up well so far, but US consumption, the main driver of American demand for the region’s products, is now “drying up”, and leading indicators for Asian trade are “pointing south”, says Capital Economics. Export growth for much of the region looks set to slide and may even turn negative in the next few months. Growth in the most tradedependent economies – Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan – is likely to be significantly lower this year.

Every country in Asia will see slower exports this year, agrees Paul Donovan of UBS. Domestic demand is weakening in America and Europe, which, with Japan, comprise 70% of the world economy. As Citigroup has pointed out, 61% of Asian exports are ultimately consumed in Europe, America and Japan.

Meanwhile, Asian consumption is not yet significant enough to offset a major decrease in US consumption, let alone slowing demand in both Europe and the States. As Stephen Roach of Morgan Stanley points out, China and India jointly account for just a sixth of American demand. Consumption in the BRIC countries last year totalled a third of the US figure, notes CLSA’s Christopher Wood.

Asian earnings-per-share growth “will drop off a cliff” if import growth starts to slow in Europe as well as in America – which seems likely as the US slowdown becomes a global slowdown, says a Citigroup Asia Equity Strategy note. Margins have been squeezed amid higher commodity prices and volumes have been the main driver of profitability.

What’s more, the current 2008 earnings growth forecast for the region, 8.4%, looks unrealistic and valuations are far above average. Asia ex-Japan is on 2.3 times book value, while 1.3 has been typical in American recessions in the past. If this slowdown is only half as bad as the 1990 or 2001 episodes, markets could still fall by another 20%. “The worst is not behind us.”

Source:http://www.moneyweek.com/file/45253/dont-count-on-decoupling-asias-market-slide-isnt-over-yet.html