Go Where the Growth Is

Economic growth is what drives stock markets higher. So rather than put up with slow growth in the U.S., with its threats of recession, shouldn't you invest your money in countries with growing economies?

Across the world, economies are slowing down. According to the International Monetary Fund, world economic growth will slow to 3.7% in 2008, down from almost 5% in 2007. Although worldwide totals may show lower growth rates, many places in the world are seeing healthy expansions in their economies.

What slowdown?
There's a lot of debate right now among economists about whether foreign markets have "decoupled" themselves from the U.S. Theoretically, if the economy were truly global -- with free flows of labor and capital across borders -- you'd expect local variations in growth rates to disappear as the world reached a new equilibrium.

However, despite ongoing growth in international trade, there's still plenty of room for parts of the world to grow much faster than others. When you look at the numbers, you can see these regional differences quite clearly. Although industrialized economies in the U.S., Europe, and Japan are all likely to see slow growth in the next couple of years, emerging markets are still going strong:

Even if the emerging market economies see their GDP growth moderate somewhat, they'll still be growing at a healthy clip compared to most countries.

Priced to move
With such high growth rates, you might expect stocks in emerging markets to be extremely overpriced. Indeed, in some markets, overseas stocks have fallen substantially in recent months because of overvaluation. India is down 23%, and China is down 14% thus far year to date. Baidu.com (Nasdaq: BIDU) lost nearly half of its value from December to March before recovering strongly, and Tata Motors (NYSE: TTM) is off nearly 20% since January.

Yet by one simple measure -- the P/E ratio -- emerging-market countries have quite reasonable stock market valuations. And in some cases, they look downright cheap.

You can see the same attractive valuations by looking at individual stocks. Brazilian miner Vale (NYSE: RIO), for instance, trades at around 15.5 times earnings. That's much lower than competitors like Australia's BHP Billiton (NYSE: BHP) or Britain's Rio Tinto (NYSE: RTP), with P/Es of about 19 and 22, respectively. Similarly, China Mobile's (NYSE: CHL) stock price, at about 28 times earnings, is roughly comparable to British telecom Vodafone (NYSE: VOD), despite China Mobile's faster expected growth rates going forward.

Improve your chances
Even when the economy is slow, you can always find companies that will do well. And if you focus on growing markets, you'll have a better shot at picking winning international stocks that will capitalize on favorable economic conditions.

For more on going global to find profits, read:

• Why you must own international stocks.
• The best values in China right now.
• Low returns on domestic investments that will scare you silly.