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Technology Stocks : PCW - Pacific Century CyberWorks Limited -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ms.smartest.person who wrote (995)	4/5/2001 9:13:07 PM
From: ms.smartest.person	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2248

Only a Few Funds Set Their Sites On Offering Quality Information April 6, 2001 Money & Investing By ERIC BELLMAN Want to ape the investment techniques of your favorite mutual fund? Don't expect any help from its Web site. While mutual-fund sites in Asia offer scads of fund data, most do little to explain their strategies or educate their investors. (For the exceptions to this rule see our citations below.) Take Orbis Investment Management Ltd., which manages the fund that outperformed all other offshore Japan funds over the last 12 months. It's a natural place to look for dollops of wisdom on Japanese companies like Sony. But the site has mustered only a few paragraphs on Japan -- taken from deep inside a 2000 annual report. Most of the real-estate on the site is devoted to fund prices and performance tables. Others sites, like those of powerhouses Nomura Asset Management and the Unit Trust of India, are heavy with disclaimers and listings of services provided. What's missing is any discussion of what the fund managers are buying and selling and why, as well as analyses of industry, market and macroeconomic trends. Is now the time to switch from stocks to bonds? Are Taiwanese chip companies a good long-term bet? You won't find these debates playing out on most mutual-fund sites. What gives? Are the fund houses being secretive? No, says Samir Arora, a fund manager at Alliance Capital Management Singapore Ltd. It's a question of resources. "Fund managers don't have time to write. We have to be told to finish our quarterly and monthly reports," he says. Non mutual-fund financial sites are no better when it comes to nurturing small investors. Market and business sites in Asia like Boom.com and AsiaOneMarkets.com tend to focus on breaking news -- earnings for Pacific Century CyberWorks Ltd., for example, were downloadable minutes after they were announced last week. And brokerages provide plenty of analysis, but it's often too arcane for the average investor, with discussion of a stock's beta or a company's amortization. After scouring more than 40 sites of companies with mutual funds invested in Asia, we did manage to dig up a few that were consistently useful. Here they are: www.jffunds.com1: Even if you don't own any shares in JF Asset Management, you can learn a lot by watching how its fund managers shift their holdings and then comparing those movements with the fund managers' mini-outlooks, in which they delve into the economic trends that forced their hand. For example, last month's report on their Greater China fund hinted that Taiwan's benchmark index was at attractively low levels and, sure enough, it was one of the few markets to rise in March. The front page of the site displays occasional articles from fund managers discussing timely topics like whether Japanese stocks will fall much farther, and proper trading strategies for this year. www.indocam.com2: Indocam's site has a lot of useful information once you weed out old reports. (Ignore the "investment forum" section; it contains nothing from this millennium.) In its monthly and weekly commentaries, Indocam managers and analysts scan markets across the globe and flag the most important trends in each area. They also seem more likely than others to comment on the future. In their latest "Asia-Pacific Investment Outlook" they predicted: buying in Korea if the Korea Composite Stock Price Index fell to 500; a rebound in the Hong Kong property market; and that the Malaysian benchmark index, the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange Composite Index, would find a floor around 650. www.aberdeen-asia.com3: Aberdeen Asset Management's site has nicely formatted reports that you can print out and pore over during your work commute. Its weekly summaries of important events are great for the busy small investor, while its monthly reports help put Asian events into a global context. Unfortunately, Aberdeen hasn't yet posted its "Global Investment Overview" for March. www.baring-asset.com4: Go to the "news and views" section of this site from Baring Asset Management and you'll find daily reports on equities, debt and emerging markets as well as monthly overviews of different regions. The site also has monthly reports on funds that explain recent trades and future strategy of the managers. Unfortunately, some of the monthly reports posted are months old. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- URL for this Article: interactive.wsj.com Hyperlinks in this Article: (1) jffunds.com (2) indocam.com (3) aberdeen-asia.com (4) baring-asset.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright © 2001 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Printing, distribution, and use of this material is governed by your Subscription Agreement and copyright laws. For information about subscribing, go to wsj.com interactive.wsj.com