alternative places to invest

Capital is an input to production. The idea is to find the most productive use of capital, then put some there. A direct manner gives more control, or one could say closer to home gives more control.

How much emerging market growth is simply "Capitalism, Unchained?" Is it better products, or a combination of capitalism, democracy, pent-up demand, and comparative advantage of other inputs of production?

I'd love to participate more in this discussion, but there's so much that one has to consider when going into emerging markets.

Where is the capital coming from Is there local ownership What is the product destination What are the comparative advantages How is the political stability How is the import / export climate (i.e in the U.S. and E.U.) Can you get capital in and out What is the local skill level (and of course, how's the food).

My bet is most large cap international funds hold EU companies, and emerging market funds simply collect companies as their market cap makes them "OK to buy." Yet for many years, the single largest exporter out of japan was IBM. As far as I know, EXPD (Expeditor's International) handles a huge chunk of the logistics.

There is no magic bullet recommendation such as "invest in X and you will not get burned".

Despite that, I strongly believe that if someone invests "like everyone else", they are guaranteed to be burned because they overpay. Thus, I routinely stay away from anything that is hyped currently.

Continuing the same train of thought, the fact that many people got burned by stocks does not, as such, make them bad investments.

Quite to the contrary, since many such "burned" people stay away from stocks, they would tend to be more attractively priced. Once the public forgets the dangers of stock investments again, and starts following silly ideas such as that stocks are riskless, it would be time to bail out again.

You can always buy apartments and rent them out, that is a relatively easy option.

I stay very far away from gold, as long it is so much in the center of attention.