Japanese stocks getting no love?

[zacb]

I have a tendency to look in the most obscure places for stocks (otc stocks and internationally) and I have noticed that Asian stocks, and Japanese particularly are first of all WAY below book value, by at least 50%. Second of all , have you seen their dividends! The average dividend is 10 percent, and it is not unheard of to hear of 20 percent dividends! As of the current moment I am in some short term trades, but after my money is not tied up I am going to invest in some of these. Most of these are well know brands (like Nintendo, which if I am not mistaken is yielding 20%) , but they are traded as adrs on the otc markets. Just thought I would throw it out there.[/b]

[polya]

However, if the stocks keep going sown, there's no point buying them. The US stock market is a charade - where rich people play monopoly. Is this true in Asia too?

[xiongmao]

With this strong Yen I can't see any Japanese company making much money.

I do like high dividend yield funds though. I don't know if you can get them in the USA but here in the UK there's quite a few to choose from. Most yield 5-6%. Bond funds are also good and I bagged a Europe one at 11% income.

I like covered call funds as well - they have good yields in choppy markets.

[Contrarian Expatriate]

The concept of "value" in a stock is irrelevant to how high it should go. Wall street types like to spout this nonsense as a means to hype a company's stock, but it does not mean the stock will or should go higher.

Investor sentiment and perception is the key to a stock going higher, period. Those often have little to do with a stock's value.

[zacb]

I get what you mean. I guess what most people consider value and what I consider value are two separate things. I like a well capitalized balance sheet (discounting inventory and equipment).

There was this one fund, mapix (ticker) that yields around 11 percent. I might eventually look into that, but although that may be true with export companies (not earning as much money), what about domestic companies with good balance sheets and that mostly cater to the Pacific region?


There are two particular companies that I am keeping an eye on, one being a casino and resort company, the other being a builder. The first yields close to 40 %, the other yields 30%. And they have the balance sheet to bear any dividend , even if their eps goes down.

[Contrarian Expatriate]

I get what you mean. I guess what most people consider value and what I consider value are two separate things. I like a well capitalized balance sheet (discounting inventory and equipment).

There was this one fund, mapix (ticker) that yields around 11 percent. I might eventually look into that, but although that may be true with export companies (not earning as much money), what about domestic companies with good balance sheets and that mostly cater to the Pacific region?

There are two particular companies that I am keeping an eye on, one being a casino and resort company, the other being a builder. The first yields close to 40 %, the other yields 30%. And they have the balance sheet to bear any dividend , even if their eps goes down.

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Wilshire 5000 - The index representation of the entire stock market including small, medium and large cap stocks.

S&P 500 - The top 500 companies of the Wilshire 5000 in terms of capitalization value.

Wilshire 4500 - The small and mid cap companies of the Wilshire 5000.

Index fund investing is like auto-pilot and the returns beat those of Wall Street managers over 80% of the time!