Place your snippet of news on this thread if you feel it will help others gain from the news.

cheers GF.

Something interesting here to ponder over. From Killik morning notes.

Turning to valuations on global markets, it is also worthy now to look at historic and prospective price earnings ratios according to IBIS consensus (pre-goodwill).



MARKET VALUATIONS



2004 2005



United States 17.2 15.6

United Kingdom 13.5 12.5

EuroStoXX 13.3 11.9

France 12.8 11.6

DAX 13.5 11.5

TOPIX (Japan)* 18.1 16.0

Emerging Markets 8.5 8.5



If you subscribe to the view that the economy goes into 2005 in reasonable shape, this valuations hardly looked stretched.



Drilling down into some of the themes, we briefly flirted with the idea of rotating back to growth biased stocks. The chart we presented yesterday looked at the relative performance of stocks with a high yield versus those with a low yield (simplistic I know, but we have to start somewhere!). Despite the market moving higher over the past month, it remains the case that high yielding shares continue to out perform but our suspicion is that the tide will turn. To summarise, we believe it is time to look for the re-emergence of the growth rating. The PEG ratio, established by Jim Slater, looked at the relationship of the underlying growth rating compared to the price earnings ratio.



Below, we have highlighted some growth stocks, their price earnings ratios and PEG ratios according to REFS. A ratio around 1 is perceived as attractive and for such good quality stocks, we think cheap. The broad message is that portfolios need realigning towards growth.



Current ratings of growth stocks



Capita 341p 19.6x 1.7% 1.12

WPP 530p 15.2x 1.7% 1.15

Carphone Warehouse 150p 18x 1.0% 0.69

Smith & Nephew 515p 21.2x 1.1% 1.48

Vodafone 137p 14.3x 1.7% 1.89

Sage 172p 10.6x 1.1% 1.44

Reed Elsevier 505p 14.7x 2.7% 0.8





cheers GF

TOKYO (AFX) - An earthquake measuring 5.8 on the Richter scale rocked Tokyo
and the Kanto region of Japan Wednesday night, local media said quoting the
meteorological agency.
There were no reports of damage or injury, Kyodo news agency said, although
train services in the capital were temporarily halted following the tremor.
The meteorological agency did not issue any warning for tsunami waves which
sometimes follow earthquakes, Kyodo said.
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