With an improving global macroeconomic backdrop and relatively cheap valuations after a torrid 2018, the omens are looking better for Southeast Asian stocks next year.A likely pause in the Federal Reserve’s tightening cycle is already easing pressure on regional currencies, while lower oil prices are a boon for most markets.

Indonesia’s finance minister said Southeast Asia’s biggest economy could expand at a faster pace next year than initially forecast.Economic growth may potentially be boosted by a pickup in investment in 2018, Sri Mulyani Indrawati said in an interview in Jakarta Friday.

After years of declining home prices in Singapore, analysts are expecting a turnaround as early as this year even as most of the government’s property cooling measures remain in place.Singapore property prices will rise between 5 percent and 10 percent next year after bottoming out in 2017, analyst Vikrant Pandey at UOB Kay Hian said.

Its sovereign bonds don’t yield much more than US Treasuries, they cost less to insure than Spanish notes and its currency is more stable than China’s managed yuan.In a sign of how the flood of money into emerging markets is upending conventional wisdom, military-run Thailand with a credit rating just three levels above junk at Moody’s Investors Service has become a favoured low-yielding destination for bond investors.A current-account surplus that’s forecast to be around 10 percent of gross