We started suggesting that Russian stocks were cheap enough to buylast year. It seemed to us at the time that given the choice of buying, say US equities, at cyclically adjusted p/e ratiosway above long-term averages and buying Russian equities at prices way below long-term averages, it made sense to go for the latter.
Good long-term investing is all about buying cheap things and then waiting for a catalyst of some kind to drive them higher. Our hope had been that that catalyst would be a significant improvement in corporate governance and a rise in dividend payouts from state dominated companies (see our cover story on that here).
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