Borderless Investor

8 Lessons from Sir John Templeton

JHC — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 16:26:24 +0000

Sir John Templeton left behind a lifetime of investing wisdom when he passed away this week at the age of 95. Many of Templeton’s greatest lessons were first chronicled in the pages of Forbes. Here are eight worth remembering: 1. All investing is global. Templeton became famous in America for promoting the idea of global diversification, [...]

Forbes G-8 Package

JHC — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 21:03:55 +0000

Forbes.com has a special package of articles on the G8 Summit. Superstars like Joe Biden and Nobel Prize winner Rajendra Pachauritake center stage, but I have a walk-on appearance about African stock markets.

Curb your enthusiam for FRN

JHC — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 06:15:20 +0000

ETF junkies have been dying for a frontier markets fund for quite some time, and their wish has finally come true. Claymore/BNY Mellon Frontier Markets just started trading under the ticker FRN. Given the buzz surrounding frontier markets, FRN will probably sell like hotcakes, but don’t celebrate just yet. As with any ETF, take a [...]

Mindless mining discount

JHC — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 13:30:27 +0000

Nothing makes the arbitrary separation of foreign/domestic or developed/emerging markets look more ridiculous than the mining sector. Amazingly, people still think this way. Bloomberg points out that emerging market mining shares sell for a 23% discount to US-based peers, despite much, much better fundamentals. Olivier Eugene, a fund manager at AXA sums it up nicely: “It [...]

GE Money’s European Vacation

JHC — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 14:43:06 +0000

It’s one thing to move a couple key executives to London or even change your “official” headquarters to Dubai (as Halliburton has done). But it’s quite another to shift an entire business unit across the Atlantic. That’s what GE is doing with its consumer finance business “GE Money”. Not surprisingly, it has ruffled a few [...]

Open for business

JHC — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 04:28:46 +0000

The plunge in global markets in the first two weeks of the new year has been painful, but it will ultimately create a bevy of buying opportunities. But sifting through the wreckage yourself can be a daunting task. The good news is that some of the best global value investors around are opening their doors [...]

Global valuation ratios

JHC — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 04:02:19 +0000

There’s no shortage of places to find valuation ratios (P/E, price-to-book, price-to-sales, etc.) on the web. But good luck finding a reputable data provider that compares them across countries, in a consistent manner, and for FREE. The S&P/Citigroup family of global indices is an exception, and a very handy resource.

Stalled engine

JHC — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 09:34:37 +0000

Global diversification can work wonders for a company’s performance. But it can’t work miracles. General Motors is Exhibit A. Bloomberg reports that GM expects to garner 75% of its revenue from outside the U.S. by 2010 versus 58% today. Compared with its U.S. operations, its business is booming overseas. “GM has very aggressive growth plans [...]

New Year’s Resolution

JHC — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 03:29:57 +0000

Look for a few changes here at Borderless Investor in the year ahead. The previous post should give some sense of what’s to come. I am hoping to make the site a bit less bloggish and more of a collection of helpful links to articles, data sources, and other sites of interest to fellow Borderless [...]

Data Spotlight: GDP Growth

JHC — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 03:22:14 +0000

The IMF’s Data Mapper function is a really cool way to play around with global economic stats. This data map shows GDP growth rates by country. It seems pretty clear from this that even if the US and European economies slow down a bit, there are plenty of other regions out there that can pick [...]