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It took awhile:

HANOI — Hang around Vietnamese cafés long enough and you are likely to see an arresting sight: one person handing another a grocery bag stuffed with bank notes. Drug deal? Bribe?

In fact, this is the way many Vietnamese buy stocks these days - not through a broker or the stock exchange but through the Internet, with payment made in cold cash. Finding each other through stock-trading chat rooms and websites, buyers and sellers strike a deal online and then close it by exchanging cash for stock certificates.

It's a vivid sign of the times in booming Vietnam. With the economy growing at its fastest clip in a decade, everyone wants to get in on the action. From taxi drivers to tycoons, Vietnamese are speculating wildly on anything that might go up - apartments, gold, land and, above all, stocks.

Online trading is an easy way to play the game. Traders don't need to open an account with a broker. They don't even need a bank account. Unregulated, informal and private, the online market works something like Craigslist or eBay. But they're not trading baseball caps or Dad's stamp collection.

Participants are trading stocks in privatized state companies that make everything from fertilizer to tractors.

Posted by edelfenbein at November 19, 2007 10:08 AM