Chapter 4The Future of Investing in Asia

Today is cruel. Tomorrow is crueller. But the day after tomorrow is beautiful.

— Jack Ma

We went through some of the risks associated with investing in Asia in the previous chapters. Yet despite some of these pitfalls present in Asia, we believe that there is still huge potential hidden within Asia. In fact, in many industries and countries, things are just getting started. In this chapter, we will be detailing some of the many investment opportunities present within Asia.

One way to spot possible opportunities is through the top-down approach. For this approach, we cast our sights across the overall macro-economic environment to identify certain industries or markets that might be of interest to us. We can then focus our attention on companies within these selected groups when we search for possible investments.

Once again, we would like to reinforce the point that all investment opportunities do come with their unique potential and risks. So, as you are reading through this chapter, think about these themes, both in term of potential risks and rewards.

ASEAN, Pushing Ahead

The Association of Southeast Asia Nations, better known as ASEAN, is home to more than 600 million people.1 ASEAN is one of the fastest-growing regions in the world,2 with its combined GDP expected to grow more than 5% for the next decade.3

When investing in Southeast Asia, markets like Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines come to mind. ...

Get Value Investing in Asia now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.