There was an article in the NY Times Sunday titles “For Foreign Stocks, The Sure Bet Is Over.” As is often the case the headline writer sensationalized the article a tad but there are some important things to think about if you are one to invest in foreign equities one way or another.

A few years ago there were some especially cheap areas in foreign and emerging and many of those areas are no longer cheap. I saw elsewhere that Petrobras (PBR) used to trade with a mid single digit PE ratio, then a couple of years ago it had close to a US market multiple and now it’s higher than the US market. This isn’t necessarily a reason to buy or sell the name, if oil does go to $200 in short order, as some think, PBR is likely to go along regardless of the valuation.

PBR is an example …

by James Hamilton Could the phenomenal growth train get derailed? I remember my colleague Clive Granger telling me over a year ago about the conversations he had with people when traveling China. Everyone he spoke with seemed to believe that (1) the Chinese stock market was at that time experiencing a bubble that was going to burst, and (2) the crash would not come until after the 2008 Olympics. Clive expressed amusement that no one seemed to have worked backwards from this presumed equilibrium-- if you know the market is going to crash in August 2008, anybody with any sense would sell in July. And if there's heavy selling volume in July, the market's heading down, not up at that point, so the logical thing to do is to get out in June. But if the crash is going to begin in June, then what ...