Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Recent news reports said the US and Japan are planning to station military on Yonaguni Island in response to demands from local residents following China’s military expansion. A closer analysis, however, shows that it is more likely that such a military deployment would be the result of US and Japanese questions about the future strategic direction of Taiwan. In other words, the move is aimed at Taiwan rather than China.

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.