Still cause for hope
Re: "World-lagging Thai stocks see investors moving money into regional rivals", (Business, July 27).
Investor difference dividends do matter!
In recent times smaller and mid-sized stocks have been ignored globally.
In good part this is due to investors' obsession with so-called ETFs, which by definition favour the largest companies.
Normally the higher dividend yield from smaller companies, compared to the rest, balances things out over time.
But alas, US & EU smaller & mid-cap dividend yields are often around or less than 2%, versus barely 1.4 to 1.6% on the big cap stock indexes.
They are barely different; hence distortions there continue for too long. Consider also that 4-5% is paid on US$ dollar bank time-deposits.
Compare this to the Thai stock market, where it's just the opposite!
Recently the three most actively traded SET stocks show a yield around 1.4%.
Yet smaller sized cap stocks here often yield 3-5 times more in dividend yields, at 5-7.5%, compared to their big-cap cousins, and 10 to 15 times more vs Thai bank average deposit rates at a minuscule 0.5%.
Not least, they offer higher dividend yields than most their regional rivals.
That is the big, underreported difference -- which gives select Thai under-researched stocks here some investor merit which few report on!
Re: "Trump's new rival" (PostBag, Jul 24).
Songdej Praditsmanont promised he would mind his own business, yet here he is with much ado about nothing regarding US politics.
Kamala Harris got her start in California politics under the notoriously corrupt democrat fixer, "downtown" Willie Brown.
She was soon known as someone incapable of maintaining consistent positions on issues informed by ideology and a politician who avoided doing anything whenever possible.
In support of her 2016 senate run, the Los Angeles Times Editorial Board noted that Ms Harris "has been too cautious and unwilling to stake out a position on controversial issues."
She has continued that strategy in her role as the "border czar" VP of the United States -- doing nothing and accomplishing nothing.
Ms Harris is historically one of the least popular politicians to appear on the public stage, yet Khun Songdej gives her a big "wow" for being, in his view, an "equal match" to Donald Trump.
Wow indeed. Wasn't it Aristotle who said, "A promise made should be a promise kept?"
Re: "Amnesty panel ducks decision on royal insult cases" (BP, July 26).
The lesson taught by the House committee studying the amnesty bill is that those members of parliament of a country that calls itself a constitutional democracy, can't see that peaceful pro-democracy citizens deemed criminals at the behest of anti-democratic political players should not be at the top of the list of those deserving an amnesty.
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