img src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/43/5843/160/thinking.jpg"br /br /emfont color="#0000FF"(P.S: Sorry for any disturbances the advertisements above may have caused you)/font/embr /Why some people love to shoot themselves in the foot I will never understand.br /br /I am talking about the current political chaos in Thailand, which has forced its months-old government to call off the ASEAN summit in Pattaya on Saturday, and to declare a state of emergency in Bangkok just earlier today. There are rumours of yet another coup that could see yet another government change. My guess is that if it comes to this, it won't be as peaceful as the last few bloodless ones because the Abhisit essentially has the implicit blessings of the Thai king and the Bangkok elite and these power brokers will not let their man go quietly.br /br /This is not the first time I'm saying this, but essentially it is tragic that Thaksin had to be ...

The only licensee so far for the DJIM ASEAN is by a traditional equity fund manager, Malaysia-based Corston-Smith Asset Management.

 

Dow Jones Indexes launched the Dow Jones Islamic Market ASEAN Index on Monday, the first index to cover Shari'ah-compliant companies in six of the 10 member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN): Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

The DJIM ASEAN Index will serve as the basis for exchange-traded funds and other investment products. Islamic nations in the Middle East and in Southeast Asia are ramping up efforts to develop their local ETF marketplaces.

Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore, four of the six countries covered by the new index, have already taken baby steps into ETF waters.

At the end of the third quarter, Singapore had five ETFs; Malaysia had three, Thailand had two, and Indonesia had one ETF portfolio, according

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