Going for the right stock plays in Thailand has reaped rewards for Quest Management, despite havoc caused by Asia's financial crisis

It sounds like what the pros call a 'no brainer'. With the benefit of perfect hindsight you are transported back to 1990 and asked to invest a notional US$1,000 for the next 10 years.

Your two choices are Thailand, the home of Asia's financial crisis, or the economic powerhouse known as the United States. There could be only one answer, or could there?

Doug Barnett, founder and president of Quest Management, claimed you would have been better off picking him and his investments in Thailand than tracking Wall Street's benchmark S&P-500 index. His track record includes his first four years in Thailand as managing director of a unit of the Unifund group. If you placed a US$1,000 bet on the S&P-500 it would have returned you US$4,571 between the start of the second quarter in 1990 and the end of the third quarter this year.

But your US$1,000 with Mr Barnett would have returned you US$6,099 over the period, he claimed. In a further contrast, US$1,000 invested tracking the benchmark Stock Exchange of Thailand index would have left you with only US$230 for your long-term faith in the country. How did Mr Barnett and his director of equity research Lance Depew, who joined Quest in 1994, do it?

Well Quest is a hedge fund house and can short stocks, a handy tool to have available in a market which has been down seven years in the past 10.

The real reason is Quest is small, with just US$36 million under management, and nimble. Many of Thailand's best companies are too tiny or illiquid for big mainstream funds to consider.