After he started playing the stock market in early 2006, Tran Duy Thang made more than one billion dong (63,000 dollars) – enough to buy a bigger home for his family. But two years later, Thang – who works for a Japanese electronics firm in Vietnam's commercial hub Ho Chi Minh City, the former Saigon – has lost 70 percent of what he made. “I'm very worried about the drop in the market and that I might have to sell our home,” he said. Small-time investors – who just a year ago were lining up cash-in-hand at Vietnamese brokerage houses – are now feeling the sting of recent global economic turmoil and inflation-busting measures at home. And they are bailing out of the game. At Saigon Securities, the mood is sombre. One year ago, the room set up by the brokerage firm to allow investors to monitor the benchmark VN Index was bustling. Now, only a few punters watch as the market – one of the world's best performers in 2006 – tries to rally out of a serious slump. “The stock exchange has been deserted since the start of the year,” says Cao Huynh Ly, who is watching the action at a nearby house, Saigon Trading Bank. The civil servant owes his bank about 1.8 billion dong. Taxi driver Nguyen van Thong counts himself among the lucky ones – he invested in real estate, like many others trying to take advantage of a property boom that has seen some urban land prices double. “My passengers complain all the time,” he says, adding that some say they “have lost tens of billions of dong.”The stock market hit a high of 1,170 points in March 2007, riding a wave of enthusiasm triggered by the country's booming economic growth, World Trade Organization (WTO) membership and a huge influx of foreign investment. Annual growth is still at roughly eight percent and investments are pouring in, but that cash inflow, along with rising world oil and food prices, sent inflation soaring to 15.7 percent in February year-on-year – a 12-year
