OVER at Morgan Stanley, ''the mother of all bull markets'' seems to have come to a premature end, even before the dessert has arrived.
Even readers with rare diseases that cause acute memory loss will remember that global strategist Barton Biggs set the local market in motion by describing himself as ''overfed and maximum bullish'' after a trip to China, which led him to predict prices rising by ''several thousand per cent''.
This was on September 27. Now he's selling a third of his Hong Kong stocks.
It's been a good six weeks, but we haven't seen thousands of per cent.
One of the interesting things about Barton's research notes is the lively imagery, plus his love of an interesting English-speaking character to have lunch with.
Incidentally, the people who run Morgan Stanley's futures operations must have had lunch with the same people as Barton, but a week beforehand.
Barton's ''overfed and maximum bullish'' recommendation followed a meeting with the vice-governor of the People's Bank of China, who impressed Barton by saying ''in perfect English'' that the Chinese economy was ''out of the woods''.