The Economist (July 26)
“ONE trillion dollars. That may be the cost to Russian investors of Vladimir Putin’s rule…. The calculation stems from the fact that investors regard Russian assets with suspicion. As a result, Russian stocks trade on a huge discount to much of the rest of the world, with an average price-earnings ratio (p/e) of just 5.2. At present, the Russian market has a total value of $735 billion. If it traded on the same p/e as the average emerging market (12.5), it would be worth around $1.77 trillion.”
Tags: Assets, Cost, Discount, Emerging market, Investors, Market, P/E, Putin, Russia, Suspicion, Trillion
Wall Street Journal (August 8)
The sky is not falling according to Burton G. Malkiel, a former Princeton professor and author of “A Random Walk Down Wall Street.” In the U.S., “the headwinds restraining the economy are many” and further complications arise because “Europe has not really fixed its economic problems.” Still, Malkiel doesn’t believe this is a good time to sell. Valuations are likely to climb in the future. Stocks are currently cheap in terms of P/E ratios and the results of many U.S. corporations are driven less by what happens in Japan, Europe and the U.S., than by sales in emerging markets. “My advice for investors is to stay the course.”
