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To: Mark Fowler who wrote (63202)	6/18/1999 2:39:00 AM
From: GST	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

OT -- Thanks Mark -- it helps to have these targets in mind. I like the action on this stock.

To: Mark Fowler who wrote (63202)	6/18/1999 2:52:00 AM
From: GST	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

Mark -- check this out: Note the projection for on-line commerce in Japan -- 45 billion dollars per year within three years. Japanese investors have $10 TRILLION dollars in savings -- time to buy Schwab? One tenth the level of market penetration for on-line brokers compared with the US. BTW, I was asked more than once on my recent trip to Asia about how to set up an on-line trading account. Its not just Japan. Combined with Softbank's announcement bringing Nasdaq to Japan, and Sony's on-line trading venture with Toyota, etc, etc, the fuse is lit. Friday June 18, 1:53 am Eastern Time INTERVIEW-Tokio Marine's online broker seeks trust By Fiona Graham TOKYO, June 18 (Reuters) - Competition is already intense in Japan's nascent online broking industry, but newcomer Tokio Marine and Fire Insurance Co says building trust with investors will give it an edge over more established rivals. ''Rather than telling people to buy a stock because it is rising, we want to give the customer the information he needs to make a good decision and then let him have the freedom of deciding for himself,'' said Takehisa Kikuchi, senior managing director of Tokio Marine, in a recent interview with Reuters. Tokio Marine, the country's biggest non-life insurer, earlier this month teamed up with leading U.S. Internet brokerage Charles Schwab (NYSE:SCH - news). While Schwab will be in charge of day-to-day operations, Tokio Marine will be aiming to tap the more than 17 million customers in the country's non-life insurance market. So far, about one percent of those have been turned into life insurance customers by Tokio Marine's life insurance arm, set up some two years ago. If it can repeat that success with the new brokerage, the venture could quickly become a leader among the 20 or so Internet trading firms lining up to take advantage of the liberalisation of Japanese stock commission fees in October. Online broking is expected to take off in Japan as cash-rich investors, fed up with ultra-low interest earnings on bank deposits, begin to turn their attention towards mutual funds. The potential for growth in Internet trading is enormous in Japan, where there are only 50,000 online trading accounts compared with seven million in the United States, according to a report by the Daiwa Institute of Research. The business is expected to benefit from a broader Japanese awakening to online consumption, with Internet marketing specialist Modem Media Poppe Tyson of the United States projecting Japanese online commerce will reach $45 billion by 2003, or annual growth of 87 percent. The challenge for online brokerages will be to introduce Internet-savvy twentysomethings to stock trading and to introduce older customers who already hold stocks to the computer network. Kikuchi stressed that the direction of the economy and the Nikkei stock index will be all-important factors in recapturing investors who were badly burnt by the collapse of the ''bubble'' economy of inflated assets in the late 1980s and nearly a decade of economic stagnation that followed. Japan's economy, the world's second-largest, has bottomed out, he said, but he warned it was still far from being able to move forward without the crutch of public-sector investment. He expected the benchmark Nikkei stock average will either continue to idle or will rise towards 18,000, although he did not think the market's fundamentals were strong enough to support such levels. ''At 17,300, it's hard to justify the Nikkei being at these levels,'' he said. ''It could go up to 18,000 or 19,000 this year, but people could get hurt there.'' Analysts say the number of online brokers will likely halve to about 10 over the next five years, but Kikuchi says Tokio Marine was ''not looking at the short term, but at a five- to 10-year period.'' The brokerage will offer trading in U.S. stocks and bonds as well as Japanese offshore investment trusts beginning this autumn, and will start trading in domestic stocks in early 2000. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------