To remind us that not all the world is today celebrating the 1992nd birthday of baby Jesus, the Christmas Day edition of Asiaweek is helping us to keep in touch with those healthy capitalist emotions, envy and schadenfreude, in a web page devoted to
"If Only I Bought"
Extracts:
>Had you bought Hong Kong's Hang Seng index Aug. 13, when it closed at
6,660 points, you would be one happy camper today. The Hang Seng is up some
55% since Aug. 13, the first day the SAR used its reserves to buy blue
chips. (The government says currency speculators were
attacking the Hong Kong dollar, which was pegged to the greenback, to bring
down the stock market, in which the speculators had bought short positions.) <
>Property was clearly not the place to be in. The choicest homes in most
cities saw a drastic drop in values - if they could find buyers at all.
According to Jones Lang Wootton Research, your $100,000 invested in a prime
Hong Kong residential property in January is now just a piddling $43,400.
<
Chris Burford
London.