European Stocks to Buy

Guilt by association is one of the inevitable facts of the current European financial crisis, and it means that there are going to be new opportunities for European stocks to buy. Many world-class companies are going to be punished merely for the fact that their corporate offices are headquartered in Europe, even though they have the same global reach as similar companies in the US or Asia.

Most of the opportunity to buy low at a crisis point and then sell high as panic ebbs and the market rebounds has already been taken in countries such as Spain and Italy. France, however, is home to many large corporations and has yet to suffer the financial plunge. As a result, French stocks are well worth adding to a watch list. Here are a few European stocks to buy when the timing is right:

A List of European Stocks to Buy When the Next Crisis Strikes

Total SA (TOT) is a well-known oil conglomerate based in France. Given that much of its operations are European-based, Total will suffer severely in the short run when the next round of instability appears in France, yet it pays a very large dividend and already trades at a very low P/E ratio that can only go lower.

Sanofi-Aventis (SNY) is a French pharmaceutical company that also pays a nice dividend and trades at the same low 7-1 P/E ratio as Total. This global player should be a nice pickup when the markets turn on France.

France Telecom (FTE) is a pretty self-explanatory company so far as its operations and territory are concerned. The stock pays a huge 8.5% dividend, which looks pretty good compared to bond yields, and telecommunications stocks are only going up in the long term even if they suffer a temporary bump in the immediate future.

While these stocks all look attractive even now, timing is the real issue when looking for European stocks to buy.