From pipe dreams to pipeline
IT IS EASY to locate the buildings that make up Vietnam’s physical stock market. The trading is something else. People huddle in coffee shops, offices and on street corners. Wherever you go in Saigon, Vietnam’s easy-going business capital, officially known as Ho Chi Minh City, the market is everywhere. From businessmen to bus drivers, housewives to hotel clerks, everyone is in the market and everyone has an angle.
“Investors aren’t thinking about what they’re doing at the moment,” says To Hai, director of Bao Viet Securities Company in Saigon, the largest stockbroker in the market. “They just buy: they don’t care about P/E ratios or return on equity.”
Since the market started in 2000, five years later than planned, the VN...
