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Strategies & Market Trends : Asia Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ramsey Su who wrote (8811)	7/8/1999 10:49:00 PM
From: Bosco	Respond to of 9980

G'day Ramsey & all - on balance, your friend is not alone. My informants are also skeptical ["ahead..."] of HK. To be sure, the recovery has not trickled down to the lower and middle classes. Allegedly, there was even a hint of stagflation =8-o ! Having said that, IMHO, HK has actually behaved a lot better than most people's expectations - specifically, outside people. My informants have speculated that part of the root of the problem is due to the lack of long range planning even before the 1997 return. Even now, they have felt that the current administration is really running the govt on an adhoc basis! The tone of informants [now outside of HK] was definitely not optimistic. But then, many of them have yet to catch on the significance of Cyberport, so it is fair to say their viewpoint is definitely more trees than forests. best, Bosco

To: Ramsey Su who wrote (8811)	7/9/1999 9:31:00 AM
From: Paul Berliner	Respond to of 9980

Ramsey, I'd say that a major factor in the handsome returns generated by Asian markets these past 6 months has been currency translation. These indices are up a lot more sharply in dollar terms than in local currency terms. The strengthening of the Rupiah, Won & Baht, which are the 3 most bullish currencies in the region, has doubled the market returns in dollar terms than what a local currency investor is recognizing. The macro picture in the region is still murky, but the tide has clearly changed because one key thing has completely been completely vanquished from the region : Fear.

To: Ramsey Su who wrote (8811)	7/10/1999 11:30:00 AM
From: jbe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9980

All right, I'll try a second time: Question on Asia and Y2K Back in March, you will recall, the Senate's Special Committee on the Y2K Technology Problem held hearings on international Y2K preparedness, and subsequently issued a report. senate.gov As you also no doubt recall, Asian countries, on the whole, were among the most unprepared. But, as the Committee concluded, the real problem lay in determining just how unprepared. Governments and individual companies were unwilling to reveal much information, for fear of scaring away such foreign investors as had been lured back. And the private consulting firms providing the Senate with estimates had their reasons for not divulging their sources. Not surprisingly, different consultants ranked different countries differently. This was notably true of Japan. While one report gave Japan relatively high marks, the Gartner Group placed it in "Tier #3." (Tier #1: 15% of companies in country will experience at least one mission-critical failure. No Asian countries in this category. Tier #2: 33% Only South Korea,Singapore, Taiwan in this category. Tier #3 - 50%. Tier #4: 60%.) The following month, it should be added, the Gartner Group "promoted" Japan to Tier #2. At the same time, the Gartner Group assured the Senate Committee that even though "disruptions" were inevitable, "only 10% of failures are expected to last more than 3 days." So the question, in the Committee's mind, was "which areas will face disruptions longer than 3 days, and how severe will the impact of these failures be." The Committee then concluded: "This is the overall question that the Committee hopes to address in the following months." northkohala.com Well, if the Committee has been "addressing the question," it sure has not been doing so publicly, at least not where Asia is concerned. And I personally have been searching for material in which someone else addresses the question in any depth and/or detail, and all I have been able to turn up so far is this May 11 New York Times piece on China: nytimes.com SO -- is anyone out there better informed about the situation, either in general (Asia as a whole) or in particular (country or region)? If so, what impact is your assessment of Y2K preparedness having on your investment strategy in Asia (assuming you are invested there)? In short, just how serious do you think the danger of major disruption is, and what, if any, effect do you expect it to have on the region's economy in general and on foreign investment in particular? jbe