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BIGGS: It has come back quite a bit. BERGSTROM: Some of the major Russian energy companies are selling for somewhere between four and eight times reasonable expectations of earnings for next year. Whereas if you take ExxonMobil--basically in the same business--things are changing fast, but they probably sell closer to 20 times earnings. We would expect some of those differentials to start to shrink.
TIME: What emerging markets would you absolutely avoid?
BERGSTROM: We don't particularly like Argentina. Pakistan frightened everybody last year. Sri Lanka. India. We are not too keen on Brazil.
TIME: Any final thoughts?
BERGSTROM: I think that most individual investors do need to get a little more of a strategic asset-allocation framework. You need a systematic game plan in place in terms of a reasonably diversified portfolio and a strategy for implementing it, so that you don't push the panic button every time the stock market drops sharply. This is Investing 101.
KETTERER: It comes down to one word: diversification. That helps make the case for international, and that helps make the case for every other asset. The worse off you are, the more you ought to be disciplining yourself to put more money in.