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Bonds Are a 'Safe' Investment: A Big Lie Gets Even Bigger"Asia is still the place to be if you are looking for growth," says John Christy in The Forbes International Investment Report. Here, he looks at some favored Asian banking stocks -- in Japan, India and Korea.
"While China tends to get all of the headlines, the rest of Asia is on a solid economic growth trajectory for 2008. According to the latest Economist data, Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore and Malaysia are all expected to deliver 5%+ gross domestic product growth next year. Taiwan isn't far behind at 4.6%.
"Of course, these numbers pale in comparison to forecasts of 10% for China and nearly 8% for India, but they're nothing to be ashamed of. With forecasts for Europe, the U.S. and Japan all hovering around 2%, Asia is still the place to be if you're looking for growth.
"Stock prices reflect much of this, but there are still plenty of pockets of opportunity. Asian financials are a good example. These names have been somewhat unfairly dragged down by the global credit mess and subprime fallout.
"As a result, strong banks like Shinhan Financial (NYSE: SHG) and Woori (NYSE: WF) in Korea, and Japan's Mitsubishi UFJ (NYSE: MTU) are all trading at attractive valuations.
"MTU, for example is selling at 1.2 times book value. The last time we saw that level was back in 2003 when Japan's bad loan crisis was in full bloom and the Nikkei index was at 20-year lows. The current credit crunch is hardly great news, but for Japanese banks, it's nowhere as bad as things were back then.
"While U.S. and European banks are busy writing off bad loans and posting big profit declines, India's HDFC Bank (NYSE: HDB) reported a 40% jump in fiscal Q2 earnings. The bank's consumer business, which benefits from India's rapidly growing middle-class, was especially strong, with pre-tax profit growth in excess of 60%."
Each day, Steven Halpern's TheStockAdvisors.com website features the latest investment commentary and favorite stock picks of the nation's leading financial newsletter advisors.
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