Alex Wong Performance Quotations

Net interest margins in Hong Kong remain under pressure and Standard Chartered Bank's performance here in 2005 would likely not be as strong as in China and elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific where it has expanded aggressively.

The decline today was a disappointing end to the year. The weak performance was attributable to weak Asian stocks as well as profit-taking after recent gains.

There probably isn't too much downside from here. The performance of other Asian markets is quite encouraging so I think the index may hold above 16,000 and maybe rise to 16,250 later in the day.

The market is down on Wall Street's performance but it may rebound from here because Hutchison and Cheung Kong don't seem to have too much downside and China Mobile's share price in the U.S. didn't fall too sharply overnight.