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Strategies & Market Trends : Telebras (TBH) & Brazil -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Steve Fancy who wrote (9859)	11/18/1998 7:38:00 PM
From: RockyBalboa	Respond to of 22640

Steve. Did you find any early favorites? (I decided and left TBR in favor of SaoPaulo (TSP, TSP cellular but -sigh- capureed some TROs). TRB stub action is - i.e. C.

To: Steve Fancy who wrote (9859)	11/18/1998 9:51:00 PM
From: md1derful	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 22640

Hey SF: Is this fun or what...so glad you are making your well deserved fortune...cashed out my mo leaps for a triple today and have all this money to waste..soooo, what are the ticker symbols for the baby bras options..fwiw, I was long the stock tbr and my schwab account shows the value of 3/8 right now...ouch!!!! No babies have shown up yet. Sorta reminds me of all the money I lost last year...best of luck with the babies everybody...puffdaddy, speak beartalk to us man...we need a blast off.

To: Steve Fancy who wrote (9859)	11/18/1998 10:31:00 PM
From: Steve Fancy	Respond to of 22640

FOCUS-Brazil economy shrinks, outlook gloomier Reuters, Wednesday, November 18, 1998 at 20:55 By Tracey Ober RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 18 (Reuters) - Brazil's economy shrank in the third quarter, reports said on Wednesday, spelling further trouble for Latin America's economic powerhouse, which is already reeling from global financial turmoil. Hurt by sky-high interest rates and weak demand, gross domestic product fell 1.5 percent in the quarter from the second quarter, the biggest drop since the 1995 Mexican currency crisis, the National Statistics Institute said. GDP is the broadest measure of a nation's economy. A separate report from Brazil's central bank showed the country's huge budget deficit narrowed in August, but few investors or policy-makers were celebrating since the data did not reflect the full impact of the current economic crisis. Indeed, the budget deficit would have been wider if not for a one-time infusion of funds from the sale of government assets, economists said. "Despite the results being slightly better than we expected, it doesn't change the serious situation of the country's public accounts," Odair Abate, chief economist at Lloyds Bank in Sao Paulo, said. "The numbers are still bad enough and the fiscal adjustment program is still essential." President Fernando Henrique Cardoso tried to put a dash of color on the gloomy economic picture, insisting Brazil was on the mend. "We are overcoming our temporary problems," he said. But analysts said the economy had only just begun to absorb the impact of the global turmoil and a steep increase in interest rates in September, part of an austerity plan meant to put the country on a sounder footing. Some analysts have said Brazil will fall into recession after the problems afflicting emerging markets spread from Asia to Russia, which devalued its currency and stopped repaying debts in August. Since then, Brazil's government has been scrambling to avert a similar fate. It jacked up interest rates to 40 percent to choke off massive dollar outflows and put together a drastic fiscal savings plan to bring down the budget deficit. The government, recognizing that Brazil would never survive the economic fallout of widespread investor panic, also went hat-in-hand to the International Monetary Fund and wrested a pledge for $41 billion in emergency loans. But government economists said the decline in GDP in the third quarter was only a hint of what was to come. "The economic crisis in Russia at the end of August and its impacts on the Brazilian economy should have had fully observable repercussions only on the indicators of the fourth quarter of 1998," the statistics institute said in a statement. Signs of the cooling economy were most evident in the manufacturing sector, where a sharp drop in sales of big-ticket items like cars was already forcing factories to cut workers. The institute said unemployment jumped to a record 7.8 percent in the quarter, further proof of economic weakness. "This frightening cycle of layoffs, especially from privatized companies, is just going to get worse," Joao Antonio Selicio, secretary general of the national confederation of labor unions, said. "If unemployment is this bad now, what is going to happen to Brazil's working class next year?" Marcelo Allain, chief economist at BMC bank in Sao Paulo, said he had revised his budget deficit forecast, making it gloomier because of "the worse-than-expected August results and considering interest rates were raised in September." Copyright 1998, Reuters News Service

To: Steve Fancy who wrote (9859)	11/18/1998 10:35:00 PM
From: Steve Fancy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 22640

ADR REPORT - Emerging market highlights - Nov. 18 Reuters, Wednesday, November 18, 1998 at 19:36 TELEBRAS (NYSE:TBR) SHELL UP 400 PCT IN ARBITRAGE-FUELED RISE By Ian Simpson NEW YORK, Nov. 18 (Reuters) - The shell of Telebras SA (SAO:TELB4) rocketed in heavy trade Wednesday amid likely investor confusion about the broken-up Brazilian telephone company. Telebras was up 5/32 to 7/32, easing from an intraday high of 1-1/2. Telebras, the most widely held American Depositary Receipt (ADRs) in the United States, was broken up into 12 companies in a $19 billion privatization in July. The dozen spinoffs began trading as American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) on a when-issued basis Monday. They launched into regular trade Wednesday, leaving Telebras as a shell company with only a handful of assets and priced at 1/16. Traders and analysts said Telebras was being driven up in part by arbitrage, or exploitation in differences in price, between the company's shares on the Sao Paulo exchange and the ADRs. There also likely was a misunderstanding about the role of the shell company in the wake of the spinoffs, with some investors still believing they were buying telephone assets. "That ain't no phone stock out there. It's an old sofa," a trader said. Carlos Constantini, a telecommunications analyst for Paribas in Sao Paulo, said the Telebras shell still had some assets. They included real estate and equity in companies, such as a 1 percent share in Portugal Telecom (LIS:PTCO) (NYSE:PT). However, the assets would have to be sold off to pay severance for Telebras employees and other expenses, Constantini said. Telebras likely would have no assets left by the third quarter of 1999, when the government plans to shut the company for good. Telebras "is something that is destroying value every single month, because there are only outflows," he said. William Beavington, a Paribas telecommunications analyst who joined Constantini in a telephone interview with Reuters, said, "It's a highly speculative security. I would hesitate to call it a stock." He added, "It's quite likely there is a great deal of confusion about what exactly Telebras is." Among the Telebras spinoffs, Tele Centro Sul (NYSE:TCS) rose 4-3/16 to 49-13/16 and Tele Celular Sul (NYSE:TSU) was up 1-1/16 to 14-3/16. The two ADRs were among percentage-gain leaders on the New York Stock Exchange. The ING Barings Latin American index of leading regional stocks <.LAT> was up 1.11 percent. Copyright 1998, Reuters News Service