SHOWS: HONG KONG, CHINA (JANUARY 2, 2014) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL)

TAI HUI, MANAGING DIRECTOR, CHIEF MARKET STRATEGIST, ASIA, JPMORGAN

1. (QUESTION GRAPHIC)

'Should investors worry about the situation in Thailand?'

2. TAI HUI SAYING:

'I think there's two parts to this. First part is if you look at the export market, I think that's largely business as usual. At the end of the day, most of these protests are taking place in the middle of Bangkok, rather than in the manufacturing hubs. So we've seen this before. We've seen Thailand being occupied by protestors for weeks and months on end, but the reality, the impact on manufacturing is limited, even on tourism. Despite the very visual images that we see, the historical impact on tourist arrival, it's temporary and quite limited because what happened is tourists are actually going off to somewhere else like, to Phuket or to Koh Samui. So the economic impact I think will still be relatively contained from that perspective. What could hurt really is on the investment side, because the political uncertainty that's coming up with these protests, I think that will make both local companies and foreign companies just to wait a little bit more before they engage in another round of investment. And of course with an election coming up, again governments may postpone any spending program until after the election when there is a bit more clarity. So in that sense, I think while the exports, the cyclical front will still be running okay, I am a bit more concerned on the investment side of the story in Thailand, which has been really lacking for the past few years.'

3. (QUESTION GRAPHIC)

'Southeast Asia is no longer the golden spot for investors in 2014. What are your views?'

4. TAI HUI SAYING:

'Well I think they had a very strong run in the past five years. And I believe that a lot of structural aspects of ASEAN is still largely intact. You know, it's still a huge economy with a very vibrant population and consumer base and really a lack of infrastructure that could again present opportunities. But I think what's happened really here is that after several years of strong growth, there are imbalances, for example, current account deficits in Indonesia, the fiscal position in Malaysia, as you rightly pointed out, the excesses in the housing market in Singapore. I think this will take time for that to work itself out, which implies that growth in this part of the region may take one or two notches down compared to what we've had, but far from a crisis situation back in 1997. So I think if you look at the region, while during the summer of 2013, people are looking at a sort of revisit of financial crisis, I think that's overdone. The reality is I think the economy in ASEAN needs to really slow down just a notch to rebalance itself and prepare for next phase of growth. So I think 2014 will still be challenging but I think the overall fundamentals of a region is still largely intact.'

5. (QUESTION GRAPHIC)

'Is the Fed's tapering the biggest theme investors are watching out for in 2014?'

6. TAI HUI SAYING:

'Fed tapering certainly is going to be on the investment landscape of every investors in the world. I think also at the same time, one thing we look at is how does Asia or Southeast Asia respond to a stronger U.S. and Europe or developed market as a whole? Because that's been frankly lacking in the last few years. So if countries like Singapore or Malaysia or Thailand, they can feed part of their economy through the recovery in the developed markets, that's an extra engine. That can offset some of the domestic adjustments that we just talked about.'