To: FJB who wrote (67 ) 7/31/2000 5:01:46 PM From: FJB Respond to of 195 Salomon Smith Barney Expects Korean Bourse to Rebound Soon (Recommends purchase of semiconductor companies three weeks after sell recommendation?!) Salomon Smith Barney Expects Korean Bourse to Rebound Soon Salomon Smith Barney, a U.S.-based securities firm, forecast yesterday that Korea's stock market would rebound in the near future, telling investors it was the ``time to buy instead of sell.'' Though it would seem that the Korean stock market will continue to suffer from such unfavorable situations as fluctuating technology-related shares and the internal feud at Hyundai Group, these factors have already been fully reflected in the current stock prices, the U.S. brokerage said. Consequently, present stock prices encourage the purchase of Korean shares on a long-term investment basis, it noted. The brokerage advised investors to buy semi-conductor shares, including Samsung Electronics and Hyundai Electronics Industries, as well as healthy banks' shares, projecting that the Korean stock market would be buoyed on a long-term basis. Judging that the peak of the Korean chip makers' business would be around the third quarter in 2002, it forecast that the recently decreasing price of dynamic random access memory or D-RAM chips would gain momentum for a rebound in the near future. As a primary reason for the recent tumble of the Korean stock market, the U.S. brokerage opined that controversies over whether the semi- conductor and computer manufacturing industries had peaked sent the technology-related share prices on a freefall. Further, the downgrading of Hyundai Group's credit ratings bothered the investors and brought heavily debt-ridden affiliates to light, it added. The lagging restructuring process in both the corporate and financial sectors hit the already-sagging stock market hard, while the lack of transparency added downward pressures, it pointed out.