Teng Yeow Heng Michael
Managing Director
Corporate Turnaround Centre Pte Ltd

GOING forward, the Asian economy is going to continue to outperform Europe and the US. Currently, although there is a general consensus that Asia will be the attraction of the global and international funds, the reality is that the international funds are not rushing to invest in Asia yet, as these funds are currently quite risk-adverse and do not fully understand how Asia will perform in the event that the US and EU economies continue to remain feeble.

If the Asian economies can be seen to be de-coupled from the Western economies, then global funds will definitely rush in. In the event that the funds do come into Asia in a big way, retail investors should weigh in on Asian currencies such as the Singapore dollar, Japanese yen, Chinese yuan, Korean won, Taiwanese dollar, Hong Kong dollar, Malaysian ringgit, Indonesian rupiah and Indian rupee.

I see investments in the real estate as another good bet for retail investors as a hedge against inflation. An influx of people coming from the Western countries to find jobs in Asia will also increase the demand for housing. I expect the Asian central banks to increase the interest rates to cool the economies and prevent the build-up of any financial bubbles.

The stock markets may be a little more difficult to predict as they can move ahead of the economy and the Asian stock market has generally rallied quite a fair bit since the collapse of Lehman Brothers. If the global funds do come into Asia, some of the funds will certainly move into investments in stock markets.