Despite North Korea risks, invest in China and South Korea, Mark Mobius says
The mounting tensions with North Korea are raising concerns for the region and for leaders around the world including President Trump. But despite the concerns, investors such as Templeton Emerging Markets Executive Chairman Mark Mobius still have a stake in countries such as China and South Korea, telling the FOX Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo, “It’s definitely a concern, there’s no question about it. Because anything happening in North Korea will affect everybody and everywhere in the world in one way or the other. But we do have a lot of investments in South Korea and we’ve been living with this situation for a long, long time.”
In general, Mobius sees a lot of opportunity for investors in emerging markets now.
“You must remember, the three years before the beginning of last year, 2016, we had underperformance because the U.S. market was so strong,” but Mobius says, “Since the beginning of last year, then we’re beginning to see outperformance.”
Mobius says he invested in China for a long time through Hong Kong, but there is a shift in China’s policy is impacting foreign investors.
“Now the Chinese are beginning to open up the A-share market, which was prohibited for foreigners for quite long time. And that means we can get into the small and medium-sized companies.”
Mobius sees this as a great opportunity for foreign investors, saying, “Now, China is going to become much more important going forward.”
When Bartiromo asked if the increased aggression from North Korea was raising concerns about investing in South Korea, Mobius responded, “It’s worrying, but you also have to remember that the companies that we’re investing in in Korea are global in nature, many of them, companies like Samsung are really not Korean companies alone, they’re global, LG is global.”
On the other hand, Mobius warned, “Of course if there is a war all bets are off, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon.”