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

To: peter michaelson who wrote (3511)	5/13/1998 2:25:00 AM
From: Aaron Weiss	Respond to of 9980

Holy Toledo! These latest violent confrontations between the Indonesian government and its people are having a ripple effect throughout the entire region. Once again the Rupiah is courting 10,000/$. It's down 5+% against the dollar in tonight's trading alone! I just pulled up the stock index quotes for the Pacific Rim and they aren't pretty. It's a classic case of "guilt by association": Indonesia: -5.5% @ 401 Pakistan: -4.0% @ 1482 Singapore: -3.0% @ 1357 HK: -2.6% @ 9583 Malaysia: -1.9% @ 559 Philippines: -2.3% @ 2164 Thailand: -2.0% @ 374 India: -1.9% @ 3945 Taiwan: -0.9% @ 8202 Korea is bucking the trend by moving UP 1.7% China: -1.7% For those of you who are interested in buying panics (as I am), I'd suggest you take a look at the following single-country funds: NYSE:EWS, NYSE:EWH, NYSE:CHN, NYSE:TWN, and possibly NYSE:EWM. These are all country-specific funds trading very close to their 52-week lows. The closed-end funds on the list (TWN and CHN) are selling at ~20% discounts to NAV. For Korea, have a look at the Matthews Korea Fund (MAKOX). If you're of a maschistic bent, you may even want to consider Telecomm Indonesia (NYSE:TLK), it was around $40 a year ago and is now $5-$6. The action we've seen over the past week is reminiscent of the spike lows we set in 1/98 and 10/97. We may get a similar "V" bottom once this panic finally exhausts itself. Of course, I have no idea how much further things can go on the downside, but I have a very difficult time accepting the notion that ALL of these countries are going to remain in the current recession/depression forever more. Indonesia may collapse (i.e. experience an overthrow of the Suharto government), but Korea? HK? Singapore? I really doubt it! Aaron