Go Global – Investing Around The World May 30, 2019

Part 2. How?

We hope that we have convinced you to beat your home bias in our previous article.

So you want to invest in foreign markets now. But how?

In an effort to beat my own home bias, I visited Hanoi last week with a group of friends. It was the first time anyone of us went to Vietnam. None of us spoke Vietnamese so parts of the trip in the less touristy areas proved to be a challenge. Google translate was of little help when we can’t type Vietnamese into our phones.

When we venture into foreign lands, how do we plan our travel itinerary and conduct the trip?

In the same vein, when we venture into foreign markets, how do we conduct our stock picking?

So what are the universal signs driving local and foreign investment returns around the world? Among the many, we found two drivers.

In one of our previous articles, we have shown that the driver of your investment return is price paid relative to the value you are getting.

In another article, we covered market momentum and showed that rising prices tend to continue to rise and beat the market index.

Today, we retest our portfolios using common measures of value and short-term momentum and expand our coverage across various global markets.

Here are the results:

We used Price to Earnings (PE), Price to Book (PB), Price to Cash Flow (PCF) and Price to Sales (PS) as proxies of value for each of the major financial reports: Income Statement, Balance Sheet, Cash Flow Statement and Sales as a proxy of general profitability.

All our measures of value outperform its local index when applied consistently over a period of 10 years from 2009 to 2018.

The following table and chart illustrates the annualised returns of various stock picks done continually based on a single measure of value against their respective local indices.

There is one caveat: Value underperforms the market from time to time.

Over a ten-year period from 2009 to 2018, measuring and investing via PCF in Hong Kong underperformed the Hang Seng Index in three out of the ten years.

Investing via PB in Japan underperformed the Nikkei 225 Index four out of ten years.

Investing via PS or PE in the United Kingdom and United States respectively would have underperformed the FTSE 100 and S&P 500 in five out of ten years!

However, given a long enough investment horizon, the winning years vastly outperform the losing ones and your returns are more than likely to be sweet. During these turbulent times, take comfort in the fact that the fundamentals are in your favour. Buckle up, sit tight and enjoy the ride.

If reading statements are too much work, then you can:

What goes up will continue to go up. The reverse is true and that what has been falling will likely continue to fall.

We define momentum as the performance of the stock returns in the preceding 6 months and term winners are those who have outperformed 90% of its respective stock exchange.

The trick here is to purchase the group of winners and hold on to them for the next three months.

Just following this strategy blindly produced the following annualised returns over a period of 10 years from 2009 to 2018. Imagine what market technicians could have done when leverage and risk management methods are applied.

Momentum can be found almost everywhere and works especially well in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, the United Kingdom and Thailand!

And finally, we find that a recurring theme presents itself among the tests:

Whether we are talking about unmanaged indices or managed strategies presented above, returns from the developing markets are higher than those of the developed markets.

If we were to attribute excess returns due to stock picking strategies (value or momentum), the alpha captured in the developing markets are also much higher.

The reason for this, we believe, is that inefficiency exists in the developing market. That means good news for you as an individual investor or trader as it presents many more trading opportunities.

Developed markets may be crowded when many more participants pursue similar strategies, especially in the US, and this chips away at the returns.

Being a foreigner is a matter of perspective.

From a Vietnamese point of view, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchanges are their go-to when dabbling in stocks. To them, Singaporeans and the Singapore Stock Exchange ARE the foreigners.

Take a step back and have an objective look at markets:

The internet has made the world a smaller place. Why limit yourself and let non-factors stop you in beating your home bias?

We don’t even need to learn a new language like Japanese or Thai to trade the Tokyo or Thailand Stock Exchange!