Cross Cultural Investing - Investing in Asia

You cannot help but ask, is investing in Asia the same as investing in a Western nation?

After all, a lot of the literature is written for the purposes of investing in the USA or otherwise Western countries.

Common concerns are that USA is a homogenous market - one market, one stock exchange arrangement, and one language binding the country together. Even with China as a main feature, Asia is, by contrast, a hotpot of different markets, stock exchanges and languages. Even in the European Union, you see efforts to consolidate the countries under a common market and single currency.

In this article, we provide a very general framework about global investing and Asian competitors. Two books come to mind with regards to cross cultural investing, in relation to any country in Asia generally.

Peter Cundill, in his book, There is Always Something to Do, discusses how much capital he allocates to different jurisdictions. He discusses what works across different jurisdictions (and what doesn’t) and recommends best practices that he himself practised to understand cultures in different jurisdictions.

In terms of global competition between publicly listed companies in different jurisdictions, the other book to consider is Phil Fisher’s Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits. The book encourages a qualitative, subjective curiosity, probably culminating in a methodology for asking the right questions to management regarding their strategies and tactics versus the competition. This is a further general framework for understanding at a management interviewing level, how the different companies function and stand out, when compared to their competitors not only within their own countries, but in other countries as well.