Yield seekers must look overseas

with UK equities offering low yields, newton manager james harries advises that investors focus on asia and south america to find rewards

UK investors seeking income will now need to become accustomed to buying overseas equities rather than domestic stocks or bonds. That was the argument put forward by Newton fund manager James Harries at Investment Week's recent Northern Markets Forum. Harries said the global earnings yield on equities, at close to 6%, looks very attractive against a yield of around 3% for the JPMorgan Global Government Bond Index. Furthermore, using Barclays Capital data from 1900-2003, he said it was the dividend on equities that produced the real total return outperformance of this asset class over bon...