THE markets have been buoyant in the new year so far, with few negative developments from the eurozone and increasingly positive economic data from the US. But now, tortuous negotiations over a second bailout for Greece are set to come to a head on Wednesday, putting fragile market confidence to the test on the same day that data is tipped to show the eurozone is entering a mild recession, according to a Reuters report.

Already, the US and the European markets turned cautious last Friday. The Dow Jones Industrial Index and the S&P 500 slid by 0.7 per cent each after days of consecutive ascent. Similarly, in London, stocks fell by 0.7 per cent while in Germany and France, the decline was sharper at 1.4-1.5 per cent.

Valuation for the Singapore market remains reasonable. There are still a number of blue chip stocks yielding more than 5 per cent of dividend. I have readers writing in, requesting that I list stocks based on their five year average dividend payouts, as the 12-month payouts may include special dividends which most probably will not be repeated. I can't find the five-year average dividend payouts. As a compromise, I used the 'Indicated' dividend of the stocks as estimated by Bloomberg.

I also used these 'indicated' dividends to calculate stocks with the highest dividends and lowest price-to-tangible assets ratios. The list of stocks which emerged are mostly the real estate investment trusts, and property developers. Hong Leong Finance, UOB-Kay Hian, SIA, Venture Corp, NOL, DBS, SATS and OCBC Bank were the non-property related counters in the list for the big caps.

For stocks in the $200 million to $1 billion category, Reits also featured prominently. Others included GP Industries, Elec & Eltek, Hotel Grand Central, Pan-United Corp and Hi-P and United Overseas Insurance.