The Great Debate

-Kully Samra is branch director at Charles Schwab, UK. The opinions expressed are his own.-

The economic crisis that has prevailed over the global markets in the last 12 months has undoubtedly rattled investors worldwide, but rather than leaving their heads in the sand, seasoned investors have continued to search for opportunities amidst the instability.

One such opportunity that seems to have been overlooked by UK investors is that of overseas share ownership.

Whilst I have no doubt that there are viable investment opportunities in other markets, I do believe that the U.S. market provides a whole wealth of opportunities for the UK investor, especially those looking to diversify their portfolios. 

Whilst this belief stems from our experience of the U.S. markets it was recently supported by the findings of our latest survey which looked at the investing habits of active UK retail investors; specifically in relation to their views on overseas investments.

- Brendan Wood is Chairman of Brendan Wood International, a global intelligence advisory firm. Recently, BWI published the World’s TopGun CEOs as ranked by 2500 institutional investors, which provides insight into the executives in whom shareholders feel the greatest confidence. The opinions expressed are his own. -

The Brendan Wood International's panel of 2500 institutional investors suffered through last year's markets believing value would somehow prevail. Those value investing "diehards" indeed died hard.

Conversely, those who correctly read the status of shareholder confidence and acted on it were spared. In short, shareholders that had lost confidence in the system abandoned their value criteria and sold good companies along with lesser ones.

- Laurence Copeland is a professor of finance at Cardiff University Business School and a co-author of “Verdict on the Crash” published by the Institute of Economic Affairs. The opinions expressed are his own. -

Before the credit crunch, we had what I called a Prozac market. Investors on both sides of the Atlantic seemed to be in denial, as irrational as the people who end up in the bankruptcy court because for years they have kept on smiling while the bills piled up unopened.

Last Fall, reality caught up in the shape of the worst banking crisis in history, and we have now had to mortgage our earnings for decades to come in order to bail out the banks. Not surprisingly, by mid-March this year, the Dow had fallen by well over 50 percent from its peak level at the start of October 2007, and the FTSE by nearly as much. In the last three months, however, the FTSE has risen by 20 percent and the Dow by nearly 30 percent. What has happened to justify the recovery?

– Wei Gu is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are her own –

China has talked about plans to allow foreign companies to float on its domestic stock markets for at least a decade, but that’s all there has been: talk.

Now would be a good time to convert some of that talk into action. Beijing has been struggling with its own investment strategies: the state gets feeble returns on the U.S. Treasury bonds it owns, and its equity stakes in foreign financial firms are well under water.