VN Index
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ไปเจอข่าวนี้ใน The Economist ฉบับล่าสุด เลยเอามาฝากครับ
Vietnam's stockmarket
The South China Sea bubble
Mar 15th 2007 | HO CHI MINH CITY
From The Economist print edition
Deterring a new foreign invasion of Vietnam
THE trading floor at Saigon Securities in Ho Chi Minh City is buzzing on Monday morning, as shares edge towards another record closing high. Hundreds of investors watch the big-screen display of prices; their eyes fixed on their stocks, their ears fixed to their mobile phones.
Like many locals, Nguyen Kim Dinh and his wife now visit their stockbrokers every day. Mr Nguyen has retired from his job with the city government and plays the markets full-time. Many others, to their bosses' consternation, slip out of the office or spend all day checking their portfolios on the internet instead of working. A sneak peek has been especially tempting of late: the main VN Index, which rose by 145% last year, was up by a further 56% by March 12th, though since then the worldwide market jitters have brought Vietnam's shares off the top.
Squeezing past the tip-sheet sellers crowding the stockbroker's doorway, Mr Nguyen leads the way to a café next door, where spivvy characters in baseball caps are touting shares in obscure, unlisted companies. One, whose business card describes him as CEO of a one-man broker, is touting a block of shares in a hydro-electric firm for the equivalent of $22,000. How can we find out about this company, Mr Nguyen asks? No problem, smiles the broker, I can put you in touch with people who work inside it.
Insider trading and worse frauds are a grave danger on this OTC (over-the-café-table) market. But risks are not much lower on the official exchange. Many firms, including state companies up for privatisation, are only now starting to keep proper, audited accounts. The State Securities Commission is struggling to keep up with the flood of new listings. Reliable information is scarce, making it easy to whip up prices by spreading rumours. Last week shares in a broker soared when it hinted it had agreed on a link-up with Wall Street's mighty Goldman Sachs, then plunged when this proved untrue.
The popular embrace of share-trading is all the more remarkable given that the stockmarket did not exist until seven years ago. The bullishness is partly justified. Vietnam has enjoyed annual growth of around 7-8% since 2000. Perhaps $20 billion of foreign direct investment is expected this year, which should keep the economy humming. The government, though still nominally communist, has quickened its free-market reforms, recently joining the World Trade Organisation. Hidden horrors there may be, but some firms also have hidden treasure, notes Dominic Scriven of Dragon Capital, a local investment bank. In particular, land is often valued on their books at well below market prices.
Even so, the impromptu trading rooms of Ho Chi Minh City are beginning to resemble the London coffee-houses that incubated the ruinous South Sea Bubble in the early 18th century. Mr Nguyen reckons his fellow punters do realise that prices can go down as well as upthough some of those crowding the trading floor look as if the shirts on their backs are the only ones they have to lose.
Although much of the buying is local, foreign investors are also piling in to what remains a fairly small market. Its total worth has risen from $400m in early 2006 to around $22 billion. Vietnam's government and the International Monetary Fund worry that if foreign investors took fright, the market could collapse. The IMF is urging the government to cool the market, but preferably not through panic measures like the sledgehammer capital-controls that Thailand introduced last December. These triggered a stockmarket fall without achieving their objective of stopping the baht from rising.
The IMF reckons that the price-earnings (p/e) ratio of the market's top 20 firms is 73.3way above anything seen in other emerging markets, now or during the Asian boom that ended almost a decade ago (see chart). Local brokers dispute the IMF's sums: they say the market average p/e is only about 30-40. Calculations are distorted by the rush of rights issues, which is diluting earnings, thus making p/e ratios look especially giddy. If companies spend their new capital profitably, their earnings will pick up, their price multiples will fall and the market will look better value.
So far, the authorities have been cautious, says Alain Cany, HSBC's chief in Vietnam. He expects measures to slow, but not obstruct, flows of foreign portfolio investment. Local banks, which have been lending freely to finance share-buying, are being reined inthough Mr Cany thinks the restrictions should be even tighter. Taxing capital gains, as the government has contemplated, would also cool the market. Perhaps most importantly, the government is pressing the biggest and best state firms, which have yet to be listed, to speed up their plans. Since investors seem desperate to buy, it is best that they be offered shares in well run firms with good prospects. Give the running dogs of capitalism something to leap at.