'Time to pick up stocks'

'Time to pick up stocks'

SINGAPORE (AFP): It's time to pick up selected stocks in Southeast Asia at bargain prices despite the regional financial crisis but profits won't come for years, a regional equities guru said in remarks published Tuesday.

"Countries do recover, the crises do not last forever," Templeton Asset Management's emerging-markets champion Mark Mobius was quoted as saying by the Straits Times.

"At the height of the Mexican peso crisis (in 1995), we were purchasing stocks then. Now, we are sitting on handsome profits even with the correction that the market has gone through," he said.

Mobius remained bullish on Southeast Asia despite a 45-percent fall in the value of its Thai Fund since its launch in June, the report said. The de facto devaluation of the Thai baht in July triggered the ongoing regional crisis.

Mobius said investors who plough their money now into Southeast Asian stocks must be prepared to sit it out.

"Don't think about profits in the next half year or one year or two years. Think about profits in four or five years," he said.