October, one of the worst month on stock markets, is over and Standard & Poor's have published statistics for major stock market indices. I picked group of emerging markets from S&P Global Equity Indices and added four fundamental indicators. Dividend yield, Price / Book Value, Price / Cash flow and Price / Earnings.On average for emerging markets as a group dividend yield is 4.2, P/BV is 1.9, P/CF is 9.5 and FY1 P/E ratio is 9.5.For comparison, in US dividend yield is 3.14, P/BV is 1.76, P/CF is 6.93 and FY1 P/E ratio is 11.8.For both, emerging markets and US markets, this level of fundamental valuation has not been seen in decades. You can also check my last post about stock markets valuation two months ago. Just before global sell-off had been triggered. ...

A fun little bit of news out of the beautiful city of Prague today…

The first Burger King (NYSE:BKC) will open in Prague in the next few months. And it’s not only targeting the Czech Repbulic. It wants to become number one in European markets. To do that, it’s already got operations in Poland, Bulgaria and Hungary, and it planning joints in Slovakia and Slovenia.

But it’s got tough competition from McDonald’s (NYSE:MCD), who is top dog right now with 70 restaurants serving 53 million customers. It’s spent more than $172.2 million on restaurants in the Czech Republic.

When I was in Budapest, I grabbed a Whopper for a quick lunch before meeting my guide back at the hotel, Buro Panzio. It cost me 750 Forint, which is about $3.75 or so, and the place was packed. My last night in Budapest, I hit the town with some new friends, and ended up

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by Edward Hugh: BarcelonaThe euro fell against the dollar yesterday - by the largest amount registered in any single day since the introduction of the single currency in 1999. The drop was effectively a response to the growing signs of strain in Europe's banking sector. Activity in support of banks was widespread throught the day, and across the whole system. The euro fell 2.5 percent to $1.4077 by mid morning in New York, down from $1.4434 on Monday. Early this morning in Europe it was trading in the $1.41 range.This current pressure on the euro is more the result of signs of liquidity problems in the banking sector than it is a response to the growing weaknesses in the eurozone real economies, which, as we saw at the end of last week, are really pretty substantial in their own right. What follows is simply ...

by Edward Hugh: BarcelonaThis is just a very brief post to accompany Manuel's coverage of this weekend's parliamentary elections. A much fuller preliminary examination of Slovenia's economy can be found in my Slovenia is Different post, written at the time of last October's presidential election.It is also, in part, inspired, by this short paragraph in Manuel's post:Although inflation has been at times the highest in the Euro zone - Slovenia adopted the Euro as its currency in 2007 - the country's economy has otherwise performed well under Janša's tenure, registering solid growth, the lowest unemployment rate since independence and - according to government statistics (but not those of the EU or the IMF) - a budget surplus.This is, more or less, the "received wisdom" on Slovenia, that the economy is preforming well, even if inflation is a bit of a ...

by Manuel Alvarez-Rivera, Puerto Rico Voters in Slovenia, which held a presidential election last year, return to the polls on Sunday to choose members of the lower house of Parliament, the 90-seat National Assembly. Slovenia's National Electoral Commission will have 2008 parliamentary election results in Slovene as well as English. This posting deals exclusively with the upcoming parliamentary election; Slovenia's 2007 presidential election has an overview of developments prior to 2008 in the former Yugoslav republic. Save for two mandates set aside for Italian and Hungarian ethnic minorities, National Assembly seats are filled at the nationwide level by the largest average method of proportional representation (the d'Hondt rule) among parties polling at least four percent of the national vote. Voters may choose a party list or an individual candidate, and a complex procedure provides for the subsequent allocation of seats among eight multi-member constituencies (each comprising eleven seats, which are ...

A few things today.There is a new frontier market CEF from Morgan Stanley that has ticker FFD. Here is a little bit of info, here is a little more but for now the MS page has no info to speak of.According to the Yahoo News release, linked above, frontier can include Bahrain, Bangladesh, Botswana, Bulgaria, Croatia, Ecuador, Estonia, Ghana, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Macao, Mauritius, Namibia, Nigeria, Oman, Panama, Qatar, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Slovenia, Sri Lanka, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates and Vietnam.The money was just raised so the fund owns nothing yet. It may take a while to deploy ...

Emerging markets account for 80% world's population and 50% of GDP growth but only 8% of stock markets capitalisation. The list below contains all emerging markets based on Standard & Poor's classification. I ran fundamental screen to get valuation with P/E FY1 (current P/E and adjusted by forecast EPS FY1). Recently I did screening also with other indicators like Price/Book Value or Dividend Yield. As results show the lowest P/E valuation is for Pakistan stock market. Also this is the market with the highest dividend yield in the group with 5.4. Second the most discounted is surprisingly Russia which has been affected by recent political situation. P/E valuation 8 for the market with strong economic growth 7-8%. Last two countries below 10 are Turkey and Thailand. High inflation weighed on both markets. Turkey also faces significant decline of foreign direct investments. ...

Chile has a thriving and well-managed economy although income levels are only 40 per cent of the western average, according to a report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development that is likely to reinforce Chile’s case for joining the 30-nation group.More efficient government spending on education and social programmes, success in tackling the "black" economy and getting more women and young people into work will be crucial to maintaining Chile's strong economic growth, according to a new OECD report.The OECD Economic Survey also says public finances are robust, growth is strong, and inflation, despite having risen recently, remains low. But labour productivity compares poorly with many OECD countries. Boosting productivity will require more business innovation and improving the education levels of the workforce.Chile's healthy public finances are allowing increased spending on education, healthcare and other social programmes. ...

This article is quite different from my normal stories as it deals with a country rather than with a specific financial market or asset class. But please allow me the freedom to share this information with you as Slovenia is such a delightful country and also presents some unique investment opportunities for the international entrepreneur. Enjoy the read.