XTM-Group Stock Market Review

Online, November 23, 2012 (Newswire.com) - Julian Hartwig, Asian markets director at XTM-Group says: 'China's CSI 300 index of mainland stocks traded in Shanghai and Shenzhen continued to defy gravity.

It surged past the 5000 mark in August to a new record high. Until recently, domestic exchanges were largely restricted to China's mainland investors, with additional quotas granted to foreign institutional investors to participate as well. But the stage is set for a major exodus of Chinese investment cash, very possibly to Hong Kong.' 'Our investors know Asia is home to several economic powerhouses,' said XTM-Groups' Mr. Hartwig. 'But they are keen to drill down even further and spot specific opportunities.

'An interesting case is Singapore's stock exchange. Around 70% of the exchange's IPOs come from foreign entities and 40% of listings on its securities market are foreign companies, with 150 from China. Its Reit market has seen compound annual growth of nearly 100% over the past five years.'

'In our XTM-Group Investor Confidence index conducted at the end of last year, retail investors were most optimistic about the Asian stock market, with around a third predicting it would perform most strongly over the next few months. Our customers are still interested in China, Latin America and India as well as mainland Europe, but according to our top ten funds, Russia is not as over-represented as it was.' So how can private investors to go global most efficiently? As already mentioned, ETFs offer exposure to international indices relatively cheaply. They can be bought and sold like ordinary shares, but provide instant exposure to many more companies, giving the flexibility of a share with the diversity of a fund. And you can trade a number of shares in one go, with no stamp duty.

Actively managed funds offer access to a range of shares without language and time-zone problems - though with the liability of an annual fee. You can also invest in individual share options through an international broker such as XTM-Group which does not charge a premium on US, Canadian and most European trades. To trade individual shares on some emerging markets, investors commonly use a local broker to the country, or a full-service broker.

For global shares a specialist international broker is cheaper than a more generalist broker: 'With sliding scale charges on a fixed fee basis, our customers benefit from savings of up to 3.5 times compared with customers of brokers who charge on a percentage basis.'

XTM-Group is a managed futures advisory firm which assists investors with investing through professional money managers known as Commodity Trading Advisors (CTAs). CTAs belong to an asset class called Managed Futures. XTM-Group helps investors select a Managed Futures Program that's right for them, open a trading account for the CTA to manage, and monitor the trading activity of the Managed Futures Program on an ongoing basis.