Upon seeing Crystal Hsu’s business reporting on Taipei Times yesterday (July 2^nd, 2009), something alerted me greatly.

I have been following stock markets since my days as an undergrad.  That’s more than 15 years ago.  And I don’t remember seeing the Taiwan’s broad stock market index averaging a p/e (price to earnings) ratio over 40 times.  According to Hsu’s report, Kevin Hsiao, the head of UBS Wealth Management Research Taiwan, had pointed out that that p/e ratio is the highest among all four “small dragons” of Southeast Asia.  Another observation on Hsaio’s data is that Taiwan’s p/e ratio is more than twice as large comparing against all the other three small dragons (Hong Kong 18.2x, South Korea 14.7x, Singapore 15.5x) and China (14.3x) and India (16.6).  Amazing.