Kim In-chang decided to hold on to his 20 million won (US$17,000) of equities after hearing about Friday's plunge in US stocks on his taxi's radio.
"I called up a friend who also trades and we talked for a while," said Kim, 56. "My friend seemed a bit worried but I convinced him that it would blow over. The fundamentals are different in [South] Korea."
Taxi drivers, traders and fund managers in Asia all took comfort in signs that their economies are recovering after the Dow Jones Industrial Average completed its worst two-week drop since the market's crash in October 1987. While most forecast a plunge in Asian equities, few expect Friday's drop to trigger a global rout on the scale of the day dubbed Black Monday 15 years ago.
"I expect Asian stocks to be weak but I don't expect them to collapse," said Yang Sy-jian, research director at UOB-Kay Hian Research Pte in Singapore. "Asia is a lot more resilient and we've seen how Asian economies have been recovering."
Investors should buy shares in developer CapitaLand Ltd and other leading Singapore companies, in the event of "any knee-jerk reaction on Monday," he said. The first market to react to the US drop -- as was the case on Oct. 19, 1987, when the Dow dropped 22.6 percent -- will be New Zealand.
The US regulatory probes and accounting irregularities that helped fuel Friday's 4.6 percent drop in the Dow and its 15 percent two-week decline may have only a limited impact on the region's economic rebound, investors say.
South Korea expects economic growth to double to 6 percent this year, while Singapore and Australia are on track to grow 4 percent. Japan's central bank last week said the world's second-largest economy is moving closer to a recovery from its third recession in a decade. Taiwan's leading think tank, Academia Sinica, on Friday raised its full-year GDP growth forecast for the island to 3.24 percent and earlier last week JP Morgan raised its forecast to 4.3 perecnt.
As the US Federal Reserve lowered interest rates, South Korea, China, Malaysia and other Asian nations last year cut interest rates and increased government spending to boost their economies.
"I don't think Japan, or the rest of Asia, will be hit as bad," said Curtis Freeze, who manages US$130 million of Japanese small-company funds for Prospect Asset Management at Honolulu.
decoupling
"Asia is decoupling from the rest of the world. The damage has already been done in Japan. If anything, we are starting to turn the corner."
Fund managers were going about their weekend activities as usual. Freeze was on his way to a friend's house for dinner. Hans Kunnen had joined Saturday shopping crowds in Australia, where retail sales have risen for 12 straight months.
"Our fundamentals are better," said Kunnan, who manages A$20 billion (US$11.1 billion) of equities at Colonial First State Investments. "And we haven't been taking the pounding that the US has, so people who own Australian shares are less worried."
Indeed, Asian equities have been the world's top performing markets this year. Indonesia's Jakarta Composite index led the pack, rising 47 percent. Thailand's SET Index was fourth with a 42 percent gain and South Korea's KOSPI was sixth with a 22 percent rise.
In Hong Kong, investors lined up to buy shares in the world's third-largest sale of new stock to the public this year, allowing the Bank of China's unit in the city to raise US$2.8 billion. They were attracted by the outlook for China's economy, which is on track to expand 8 percent this year.
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