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To: 16yearcycle who wrote (36344)1/24/1999 12:42:00 PM
From: 16yearcycle  Respond to of 164685
 
China shrugs off impact of Brazilian crisis
BEIJING, Jan 24 (Reuters) - Chinese economists shrugged off the impact of Brazil's currency crisis on China's exports but conceded that it could be more difficult for emerging markets to raise money abroad, state media said on Sunday.

The devaluation of the Brazilian real ''will not do terrible harm'' to China's foreign trade, the China Daily Business Weekly quoted Li Zhixiang, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, as saying.

Brazil is China's largest trading partner in Latin America, but bilateral trade accounts for only a small portion of China's total foreign trade.

China's exports to Brazil totalled $959 million in the first 11 months of 1998, just 0.5 percent of China's total exports, the newspaper said, quoting customs statistics.

Exports to Latin America make up just 1.6 percent of China's total exports.

''Therefore the losses caused by the currency devaluation in this region will not amount to a significant level,'' Li told the English-language newspaper.

But the Brazilian crisis would cause bankers and portfolio investors to reassess the risks involved in investing in all emerging markets, said Mu Yibin of the People's Bank of China, the central bank.

It ''may make it a little more difficult for these economies, including China, to raise capital from the international market,'' the newspaper quoted Mu as saying.

Nevertheless, the Brazilian currency turmoil was unlikely to be as severe as the Mexican crisis four years ago, Mu said.

''Brazil still possesses an adequate foreign exchange reserve and its economic structure is generally rational,'' he said.

''But uncertainties still exist,'' Mu said. He did not elaborate.

Wu Nianlu, vice-chairman of the China Society for International Finance, said the Chinese currency -- the yuan or renminbi -- was likely to remain stable.

''The renminbi will still be able to maintain its stability this year,'' the newspaper quoted Wu as saying.

''But this doesn't root out the possibility of small-range ups and downs.''

China's central bank chief Dai Xianglong has vowed that stability of the yuan was crucial and Beijing had the means to defend it.

Dai said China would focus on adding to its substantial foreign exchange reserves, which ended last year at $145 billion, up more than $5 billion over the end of 1997.

Economists say that a small devaluation of the Chinese currency would not spur sluggish exports and a bigger one would trigger a new round of currency devaluations in Asia, ultimately offseting any gains for the nation's exporters.

Beijing also fears that a yuan devaluation would destabilise Hong Kong, which has seen its currency come under speculative attack in the past.

And it is wary of the impact of a devaluatuion on its own ability to repay overseas debts, which stood at $144.5 billion as of November.

The central bank has kept the yuan at about 8.28 to the dollar on the nation's tightly controlled foreign exchange market.

China restricts currency conversion on the capital account, mainly for investments, and in September last year it tightened regulations on the current account, largely for trade, to curb capital flight.



To: 16yearcycle who wrote (36344)1/24/1999 12:58:00 PM
From: H James Morris  Respond to of 164685
 
>>China's yuan is convertible under the current, or trade account only, meaning speculators can't attack the currency.<<
That's why I believe they won't have to devalue the yuan, plus the Chinese pride. It means everything to them.



To: 16yearcycle who wrote (36344)1/24/1999 6:05:00 PM
From: Skeeter Bug  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 164685
 
>> The yuan won't be devalued in 1999.<<

2000?



To: 16yearcycle who wrote (36344)1/24/1999 7:43:00 PM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph  Respond to of 164685
 
The Internet Capitalist
SG Cowen Internet Research
5
pages that day, we were surprised by the
dearth of sports figures that were able to call
their own top and retire with dignity, poise,
and great reputations.
Because almost all things come back around to
the Internet for this research group, we got to
thinking how difficult calling the top is in this
business, too, and just how few people have
been successful at it. We don't pretend to be
smart enough to time the Internet sector up or
down, though lots of cycles have been spent
trying to determine just that. Instead, we tend
to take the Ockham's razor approach to
Internet investing; that simple rules are
preferable to complex ones. So when asked
over the last few weeks and months about
where the “top” would be in the Internet
sector, we often mumbled something about
long term horizons and buying programs. That
is, until we were faced with an actual call on
what to do with Yahoo! at $48 billion on
January 13th, the day they reported their Q4.
We wish we had coined the term “buy the
mystery, sell the history”, but since we didn't
we'll gladly pass it on as a possible explanation
for the price action in Yahoo!'s stock after they
reported what was another very strong quarter
last week. The day after Yahoo!'s
announcement that they grew revenue 40%
sequentially and bested even the most ardent
Internet bulls' estimates, the stock……
dropped 60 points (and as of this writing is off
more than 100 points from the level it
achieved after the earnings announcement).
Though there can be no doubt that whisper
number expectations had some effect on this
sell-off, we think it's worth repeating our own
thought process that we shared with our
institutional sales people the morning after the
Q4 results (beware that these comments are a
few days old as of this writing), since it speaks
both to our investment philosophy within the
entire Internet space (that Ockham's razor
thing) as well as some specific thoughts on
Yahoo!:
What To Do With YHOO At These Levels?…
If you're like us, you search for perspective, an
exercise we've been engaging in for the last
several weeks (ok, months) as we've watched
with astonishment as all manner of Internet
stocks have taken off. We've attempted to
illustrate our evolving thinking on valuation
via many forums, but suffice it to say that, to a
certain extent in the Internet space, we're still
dealing with the unknown. Even getting to a
broad sense of what leading Internet
companies with exposure to as much revenue
and having as attractive a business model as
YHOO are worth is a tough (and imprecise)
business.
And for fun late last night we went back over a
model of YHOO that we kept from January
1997. Our thinking at that time was that in
1998 YHOO would report $0.12 per share in
EPS on something like $65 million in revenue
Well, history now shows YHOO's 1998 EPS at
$0.45 on revenue of $203 million, 275% and
202% higher respectively than what we (and
the company, we may add) thought was
aggressive then. Now we're not saying that the
2000 actual EPS estimate will be 275% higher
than what you see in our estimates, but our gut
tells us that the earnings and cash flow upside
remains too big to quantify with any precision,
and our recall from the cold days of early 1997
adds weight to that feeling.
That said, we're as harried about the fact that
YHOO now has a market cap higher than all
but Disney, Time Warner, and AOL as you
probably are. When this company was worth
$500 million in the winter of 1997, we thought
a market cap of $5 billion was probable in
time; when it reached $5 billion, we thought
$50 billion was, perhaps, possible in time; and
now that it is almost $50 billion, we think…we