Categories
News

Brief Asean Trading Link update

An article in AsianInvestor on the Asean Trading Link provides a few snippets on how the service is going so far – the story will probably disappear behind the paywall soon, so the main points are:

Bourses in Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand are gauging investor interest in trading ETFs, structured products and Islamic bonds via the recently established Asean Trading Link.

This makes sense – the exchanges need to ensure the link evolves and with the other three countries (Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam) unlike to join soon, they need to find ways to grow it through their own efforts.

Categories
News

Thailand joins Asean Trading Link

As scheduled, Thailand joined Singapore and Malaysia on the Asean Trading Link last week. Going by news coverage and a couple of conversations I’ve had, Thai investors and brokers seem to be more enthusiastic about the project than anybody else.

That’s understandable – the historical ties between Malaysia and Singapore mean that anybody from one country who was keen to invest in the other could do so fairly easily and at reasonably low cost. But while there are  brokers in Thailand who can already access other Asian markets, the link promises to make it a bit easier and cheaper for local investors there to invest in neighbouring countries – and, going the other way, also hopefully increase interest from foreign investors in Thai stocks.

Categories
Investment

Historical valuation data for global stockmarket indices

Long-term historical data on price/earning ratios, price/book ratios and dividend yields for stockmarket indices is extremely valuable in looking at long-term returns – but it can be very difficult to obtain. While price data is available for many major markets stretching back decades or more, valuation data typically hasn’t been recorded so carefully.

The figures that are available have usually been reconstructed from old earnings reports and are proprietary data sets that are expensive to access. For those who are willing to pay, Global Financial Data is probably the most comprehensive source for very long-term financial data of all kinds.

For those who can’t justify the cost of paid-for data, there are a few freely downloadable data series for some of the major indices around the world, although they are often hard to find and there is no consistency about which markets are available. The following links will take you to the ones I’ve found that are still updated  – if you’re aware of any others, please let me know in the comments below or by email.