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Strategies & Market Trends : JAPAN-Nikkei-Time to go back up? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: borb who wrote (1065)	6/1/1998 9:42:00 PM
From: Step1	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3902

Sorry, I differ here... >>>After 11 years of bad time, there should not be more bad news. Everybody knows bad debt, slow in deregulation and economy reform<<< 9 years, the bubble burst in 1989, the peak was reached in the stock market anyway, on December 31st 1989 and it was 38,000 something. I read some interesting comments in a book on the aftermath of the bubble , can't remember the title though, and it said the author had monitored golf membership prices as an indication of where the market was going. The theory behind this was , most golf players are executives, therefore insiders and if they stopped bidding up the membership it must be because they feel or know that the prices or earnings of their companies have finished their expansion so the good times are about to end. Anyway, memberships don't sell too well lately. The other thing is that Japan 's bubble was first and foremost a real estate bubble. Land went sky high and drove the stock prices up according to what the land holdings of a particular company were, irrespective of profits or earnings. When the land stopped appreciating, there was no reason to bid stocks higher. >>Where is good place to invest?<< Cash is king. There is a freight train coming, if you are in good shape you can wait until the last moment to jump off the tracks or you can wait for more opportune times. IMHO sg

To: borb who wrote (1065)	6/2/1998 1:06:00 AM
From: Step1	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3902

Borb, thought I would add the following points too... >>What other unknown bad news can be for Japan?<< Lots I believe, judging by how some of the bombs that were first denied and then let out to the public last year. The problem is that they may not collectively know themselves. The point is though, there doesn't need to be bad news , the possibility that there might be more is like a sword hanging over their collective heads... My take though is that there is plenty more to come. I base this on observations rather than facts though: - used car dealers on my way to work have no more space to park the cars on sale in their lots anymore. - official unemployment rate is highest since 1953, the unofficial rate is probably incalculable anyway, but must be twice that. (official now 4.1, I reckon with underemployment, welfare and uncounted, must be 8%) - up until last year, all the foreigners around here (I live in a non industrial city, far from the financial centers of Tokyo and Osaka, so these foreign folks are not financial experts, just regular folks like me I guess, but that can be an advantage) could not understand where the recession the papers were talking about actually was. There was still plenty of money on display, new flashy cars on the streets, new shops opening etc... Being from Eastern Canada, recession brought back some totally different images (boarded up shops, bankrupt restaurants, old clunkers on the street, widespread unemployment in the high tens ...) I think it may finally be coming to Japan. Last October was a really harsh wake up call for all. Sanyo Securities and Yamaichi really shocked the hell out of everybody, then came Korea and Indonesia. No fun, no more. There is a hotel in my town which they were just putting the final touches to when I first came in 93. at the then exchange rate (close to 117 yen to the dollar) it cost near 2 billion dollars usd to build (Indoor pool the size of a football field almost, convention center, 45 floor hotel all on its own in a town of 300,000 (small for Japan)... Since then they have racked up 800 million in operating expenses deficit, so if you bought it and assumed the cost of construction and the debt incurred to keep it afloat, you 'd be out 2.8 billion (280,000,000,000 yen) actually less if you used today's dollars... How can it ever be repaid? They were counting on foreign Asian visitors to keep it busy when the natives did not come in herds as planned. They even had some success bringing some Taiwanese and Korean tourists up until last year. That 's now gone .... How much good money do you throw after bad before you realize it is a lost cause? So is there more bad news to come out of Japan? I think it has just started... Sorry for the long message. I respect your opinion and hope you are right . I lose a lot of hard earned money every month while the yen is drifting... lower and lower. This thread will be interesting if people are not afraid to come out with their own take on the whole thing. later sg