Stock Exchanges

Judith Aidoo remembers the time not long ago when talk about the virtues of investing in Africa was like trying to peddle a bitter pill. "The perception was that Africa was a country plagued by many problems--certainly not a place to commit millions in investing dollars," said Aidoo, a 31-year-old former Goldman, Sachs & Co. securities lawyer and founder of the Aidoo Group, a Wall Street-based investment banking boutique.

It might seem as if 1998 was a bad year for Iraq--its eighth under strangling U.N. economic sanctions and a time of heightened tension, culminating in the heaviest airstrikes since the 1991 Persian Gulf War. But that's not the view from the Baghdad Stock Exchange, where, according to investors, the future has never looked rosier.

Vietnam, trying to graft a modern market economy onto a rickety communist base, is taking its first steps toward setting up a stock exchange this year. But experts say a full-fledged stock market is some way off and that the form it will take is unclear. Officials are also studying whether and how to build on the fledgling "foreign exchange transaction centers" in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City that set Vietnamese dong-U.S. dollar rates.

When business finally resumes on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange--the most famous 36,000 square feet of space in the financial world--the brokers and traders who work there will know that more than a century of history and their very way of life will be on the line. "Being inside the exchange building will be difficult," said James A. Jacobson, a leading trader and former NYSE board member. "People are going to relive harrowing experiences. But it's something we all have to do."

Rafael Castro--son of Priscilla Rivera, aficionado of airplanes and baseball, Rosemead High School Class of 1993--found himself being squired about the New York Stock Exchange on Friday as though he was the chief executive of Exxon. There was lunch in the members dining club (Rafael chose chicken nuggets), a private introduction to the inner workings of the exchange, then a guided tour of the trading floor on the arm of the stock exchange's president.

There are plenty of ways to lose your shirt on the Iraq Stock Exchange. Right now, the biggest risk is simply showing up. As one of the economic institutions hatched since the U.S.-led invasion, the exchange is widely viewed as a fat symbolic target for insurgents. Even its location makes it vulnerable: The ISX, as it calls itself, is housed in a former Italian restaurant just one block from volatile Haifa Street.

The Paris Bourse is planning an alliance with European exchanges left out of the partnership announced between the London Stock Exchange and Frankfurt's Deutsche Boerse, its chairman said in interviews. Jean-Francois Theodore, chairman of SBF-Paris Bourse, which owns the French stock and derivatives markets, said that by September Paris intends to present plans to form a rival federal exchange including Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium.

The "Big Board" lit up. Traders slipped out of down parkas that covered business suits. A guard stoically took his place by the sliding glass doors. And, at the stroke of 10:02 a.m., the floor leader chimed a brass bell, the traders huddled around the board, the television crews took their positions and spectators in the upper gallery pressed their faces against the glass. Just another Tuesday at the Ljubljana Stock Exchange: Lights! Camera! Capitalism!