In the past few weeks, TWST has spoken with a number of portfolio managers who stress the importance of a global focus- some turning their investments towards US companies with a strong business outside the US, and some looking towards foreign economies entirely. But there are still problems to be faced when dealing with global investing, and Taiwan is an example of that. 

We spoke this week to two of the portfolio managers of the HSBC Taiwan fund, who spoke positively about the investment climate in Taiwan.

They also, however,  spoke to us about the restrictions that the government places on investors. Despite their proximity, the amount that Taiwanese companies can invest in China is limited to 40%. In addition, there are the government has restrictions to how much money you can take overseas- making many Taiwanese investors wary to bring money back.  

However, despite these current problems, the upcoming presidential election in Taiwan promises to change all this- or to, at the very least, relax these restrictions.

For full interview with Jack Chang and Shirley Yang of the HSBC Taiwan Fund, including an overview of the region and their investment philosophy, click here.  

TrendStar Advisors is a money management firm that focuses eclusively on investing in Science and Technology stocks. They talked to us a little bit about some of the trends in that space that are worth following:

Mr. Laming: A longer-term secular trend that we are focused on is virtualization. Increasingly IT administrators are adopting virtualization where a single server is divided into multiple virtual environments. These virtual environments are sometimes called partitions. Each partition operates as a separate device, allowing a single server to host multiple different operating systems for all of the users on the network. For example, on a single server, one user might be using Linux, one might be using Windows and yet another might be running an Apple environment. This growing trend is taking place for a number of reasons, such as the maximization of resources, the simplification of security or quick response to changing needs. Today, a different server may be used for email, another server for printing, and another server for running a database. That’s not a particularly efficient use of hardware resources. Each server may be significantly underutilized. The leader in virtualization technology is VMware (VMW), which we don’t own directly. The company we do own is EMC Corporation (EMC), which owns 85% of VMWare.

For the full interview with TrendStar Advisors, including a complete overview of their investment philosophy and strategy, click here.

Speaking to analyst Connie Maneaty this week, the outlook for the Personal Care and Household products space is pretty grim. Luckily, Ms. Maneaty has some advice for investors on which companies to look at during this rough time:

Ms. Maneaty: We particularly like..Energizer (ENR)…Energizer is undergoing a transforming event with Playtex, and investors worry about the first couple of quarters in an integration where it’s not quite clear what’s going to come out of it. But Energizer’s price has fallen 22% year to date, and you have to think that whatever it is, it’s very much priced in at this point. If you look past the March quarter and start to see some of the accretion that should come from the Playtex deal, the stock looks really attractive.

For the complete interview with Ms. Maneaty, including an complete review of the current investment climate and outlook forwhere it’s headed, click here.