Savings Experiment: Snow Removal
Bonds Are a 'Safe' Investment: A Big Lie Gets Even BiggerThis post is part of a special report, Top Picks for 2010, the 27th annual survey in which TheStockAdvisors.com asks the nation's leading advisors for their single favorite stock for the new year. See all 80 stocks listed here.
"Though most investors do not associate Pacific-Rim investments with high-dividend yields, Matthews Asia Dividend (MAPIX) could change their perception," says Mark Salzinger.
In his No-Load Fund Investor, he looks to this fund, which he notes recently offered a dividend yield of approximately 4%.
The advisor explains, "The fund recently offered a dividend yield of approximately 4%. Managers Jesper Madsen and Andrew Foster seek to fill this fund with dividend-paying stocks of companies.
"The managers select stocks throughout the Asia-Pacific region, including Japan, China/Hong Kong, Taiwan and recently at least eight other Asian countries.
"Though dividends did not protect investors in American stocks from the carnage in 2008, they appear to have reduced losses for investors in Asian equities.
"Matthews Asia Dividend (formerly known as Matthews Asia Pacific Equity Income) fell only 26% in 2008, vs. 42.2% on average for the funds in Morningstar's Diversified Pacific Stock category. So far in 2009 (through Dec. 14), Matthews Asia Dividend has gained a whopping 48.1%, vs. 31.1% for its peers.
"That means the fund did about 16 percentage points better than average in a down year, and has done about 17 percentage points better in the bull market so far in 2009!
"The Matthews funds specialize in attempting to form portfolios of 'indexes of the future' in Asian markets. In other words, they seek exposure to publicly traded companies in sufficient quantities to represent a picture of Asian economies as they are likely to develop over time, not as some index developer imagined them to be several years ago.
"So, compared to existing indexes of Asian stock markets, the Matthews funds tend to devote more of their assets to consumer stocks and midsize and small-cap companies, and less to big exporters and other famous companies.
"Matthews Asia Dividend is available directly from Matthews Asia (800-789-2742; matthewsasia.com) as well as no-load at various fund supermarkets."
Steven Halpern's TheStockAdvisors.com offers a free daily overview of the favorite stocks of the nation's leading financial newsletter advisors.
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