Chinese time.

Here is a copy of an AFR article 19.8.99 that I found of great interest:

start quote

"Dragonstock promises to fire up ASX's online trade."

"A new real-time internet share-trading system will enable Asian traders to trade on the Australian Stock exchange in both Chinese and English. A pilot of the system developed by Timemac, a Melbourne internet company, is already running using the Malaysian Stock Exchange. Timemac, which is due to finalise a back door ASX listing this week through a reverse takeover agreement with gold explorer Chile Mera (ASX:CEA), plans to launch its Dragonstock share-trading service for the ASX on November 1.

According to Timemac 's chief executive, Mr William Tien, Dragonstock will be available to local and overseas investors in English and Chinese, delivering live information and stock trades through a Melbourne stockbroker.

Mr Tien said the ASX was considered a hot market in much of Asia but was inaccessible to many traders because of language and logistic barriers. "This will open up the ASX to the Chinese speaking world and especially China, which has 18 million people with a personal net worth of more than $US 10 million ($15.6 million)," said Mr Tien. "According to recent research, China is putting on 120,000 new internet connections every month and if the information is there they'll use it." Mr Tien said a bilingual test site set up by Timemac on the Kuala Lumpur Stock exchange eight weeks ago was greeted enthusiastically. "The site already has 4,500 users and is getting millions of hits every day just through work of mouth. However, Malaysian regulations prohibit the execution of orders online, so traders have to watch live price movements and phone orders through to their brokers in KL."

At present, the public can get free access to the live quotes on the KLSE from the website at www.dragonstock.com.au. However, when the ASX site goes into full production in November, users will have to pay about $30 a month for access to the live information plus about $30 per online trade.

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1. Interesting how Malaysian regulators are trying to preserve the brokers monopoly.

2. I can't help but think how bullish this is for the market over the much longer timeframe.

More and more players being introduced to world markets. Look out! More volatility. This is good for what we do. The mathematics works much better with volatility.