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

To: Mohan Marette who wrote (1625)	1/27/1998 11:04:00 AM
From: peter michaelson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9980

Mohan: Much discussion on this issue, mainly in International section of Silicon Investor and at the public forum at www.icefi.com (closed end fund specialist). The pricipal reason I hear is that CEF's are mainly held by individual investors who don't watch closely or don't like to sell at a loss. The prices of these funds are way, way down - it's just that their NAV's are down more. Still, can't ignore the weird fact that there are buyers for every trade (for example today, TTF at 130% premium). Go figure. Don't know. Weird.

To: Mohan Marette who wrote (1625)	1/27/1998 1:07:00 PM
From: Derrick P.	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 9980

Mohan, My understanding is that closed end country funds for countries that are particularly difficult for US investors to invest in tend to trade at a premium. Korean funds for example have traded at a premium for quite a while because it is difficult for foreigners to invest by other means. In the US there are many open end mutual funds that invest in Asia but very few that invest in particular Asian countries. So for most people that want to invest in Thailand by far the easiest way is to buy one of the closed end funds. Most brokerage firms will not purchase foreign shares for you. Plus tax time becomes more complicated. Personally I have been looking for a way to invest in Thailand for a while and have come up with little besides the closed end funds which I refuse to buy because of the premiums. I have considered purchasing some of the Thai bank ADR's but have felt that I did not have enough info about them to make good decisions. With the Asian markets down as much as they are some people here are conditioned to buy into these 'corrections'. Maybe they do not realize that the stocks have declined much more than the country funds. There seem to be offshore closed end funds for the same countries that trade at discounts, but without your own tax lawyer it takes a brave man to buy one. That's my best guess Regards Derrcik