Word: grayness
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...trading small stocks. But unlike OTC bourses elsewhere, Vietnam's market has no licensed brokers, virtually no regulatory oversight, and trades often culminate with the exchange of cash for paper shares at a local tea shop. Think of it as an amorphous eBay for speculators, an ad hoc gray market that sprouted spontaneously from the pent-up desire among the Vietnamese to cash in on the country's economic boom. "It's the Wild West," says Noritaka Akamatsu, the World Bank's lead financial economist in Hanoi...
...knows how big this gray market is. Nguyen Duy Hung, CEO of Saigon Securities Inc., the country's largest brokerage, estimates that at least 500,000 Vietnamese are participating (five times the number of accounts on the two official bourses), aided by more than a dozen private websites and online forums with names like mua re (street trading) and Sanotc.com. The latter, founded in July in Hanoi, has 18,000 registered users and is currently adding 300 more each day, says co-founder Hoang Minh Son. "Before the websites, people had to go to the official market," says...
...Despite the dangers, the gray market is flourishing, spurred on by Vietnam's robust growth, optimism surrounding the country's recent entry into the World Trade Organization, and the rapid rise of sanctioned stock markets. Last year, the VNIndex, which tracks the prices of all of Vietnam's publicly traded companies, jumped 144% and has risen another 44% this year. But the legitimate market is small and illiquid-the Ho Chi Minh Securities Exchange has just 109 listed companies, up from 30 at the beginning of 2006-and there are not enough shares to feed the growing mania for stocks...
...rushing to cash in while he can. He expects the unofficial market will eventually be regulated, curbing the potential for instant windfalls. To contain volatility, for example, the Ho Chi Minh Securities Exchange suspends trading in a stock when its price rises or falls by 5% in a day. Gray-market stocks can double in a single deal. "There are no rules on the OTC," says Trung, "so you can get huge profits. That's why we have to take advantage of it now." The madness of crowds, it seems, is alive and well...
...some of his work has the feel of small conceptual points inflated to large dimensions. But with the right pictures, the scale lends power and mystery. Dead Troops Talk is a fantasy of Russian soldiers massacred in Afghanistan in 1986 who have come back to life on the gray rocky roadway where they died. In an enormous tableau--the picture is 7 1/2 ft. tall and almost 14 ft. wide--they awaken to discover their own mangled flesh in shock, grief, sleepy-eyed indifference and also wild-eyed amusement...