we're going to be live in beijing as the motor show opens its doors to the public. >> we have a 5-day rally. nikkei up two-thirds of 1%. 1.2%.pines up volumes are really quite flat. kong being shut down today. looking toernment strings.e credit

>> a dramatic slow down in japan's exports. -- moving economy. consistent. imports really surprising. course, it has fallen 18% versus the dollar since prime minister abe came to power.

what it means at the end of the day is that abenomics is becoming more difficult to execute as this economy encounters increasing headmans >> we are not getting this -- increasing headwinds. >> we are not getting this. >> the markets have:. that have fallen. japan has gone from first to worst. it can turn around. anything is possible. skepticismcreasing among investors over whether the government can deliver on this >> volkswagen says it expects to be number one in china for the second straight

year. winterbourne that's where the corn was speaking ahead of the -- winter carnival is speaking winterkorne was speaking ahead of the show today. hasof china's domestic cars sold for a record. the tailor-made red flag will be delivered in the next three months. faw produces the vehicles and make saudi's -- makes audis in china. show.is the vision car -- hen engle

it wasn't a good sign when the roads to the beijing auto .how were clogged the few traffic police hurting the traffic into what was up -- hearding the traffic into what was supposed to be press only did. three hours in traffic, ironically heading to the auto show where they are going to sell more cars and put more cars on the street. it was a much better once we got inside as we hit human gridlock at the press registration. >we've gone from one slow boilig frying pan into another. three and a half hours or so in the car. now we are in the queue to get our presentation, the press presses -- the press passes. the irony. conference that is opposed

to be delivering mobility. remember i said it was press day? there may have been more toddlers and grannies than working journals here. it added to the crush. making matters worse, the popular korean actor was asked by policeman to come because of security reasons. david beckham is also a no-show, too, at the show. so you signed on david beckham to be your china jaguar brand spokesman. he was supposed to be here. what happened? too many people here? >> maybe. >> how long did it take you to get here? were you surprised by the amount of traffic? >> not really surprise, but it took me two hours. >> next year, helicopter, ok?

>> can't afford it. >> a few smiles could be found among the aisles. >> welcome to beijing. lots more from the beijing auto show, including a man with the plan. we will be listed -- we will be hearing from alan mulally. let's get back to the markets now with john dawson. >> the yen the big story. the biggest deficit on record for march. the exports disappointing. the yen driving up if you like the nikkei. rowtopics up five days in a -- topix up five days in a row. lending restrictions being loosened. japan relisting some financials. not sure what those are.

up 20% right now. big gains for these two companies. that is really encouraging. is big gainer on the nikkei should say bank -- is shinsei bank. q no motors, mitsubishi and must forecast revenue as much as ¥2 billion. very encouraging as well. overall, these three, keep your eyes on these. dramatic gains. kong, new hong

zealand is closed. >> let's check on the stories making headlines around the world. will look into whether the ship made a sharp turn before sinking. 64 people are now confirmed dead. 174 survived. about 240 are still missing. transcripts reveal the level of panic and chaos among the crew as the ships are deducing. parkpresident -- present describes actions is -- president park describes action this close murder. >> victims were shot at at a ukraine. in the russian foreign ministry blames ukrainian nationalists. president putin says he has the right to send troops to protect ethnic russians. vessels ukrainian naval

arriving from crimea. they were headed to negotiations in moscow -- negotiations between moscow and crimea. the robot submarine searching for the missing malaysian airliner has now made eight dives into the indian ocean without finding any sign of the plane. the mission is now two thirds complete and is expected to finish this week. a fleet of planes and ships continuing to look for debris. searchers think they detected signals from the black rocks is, but the -- black boxes, but the batteries are now thought to have expired. >> a new installation is being built in an island. tensions between beijing and

tokyo rose last year. coming up next, we will be moving thet is markets here in asia.

investors are turning live from stocks -- turning away from stocks. how bad are things? >> on the economy level, things are pretty good. the earnings season was pretty robust. the first quarter gdp numbers came at 7.4%, which beat most economists. >> but nobody believes them. >> a pullback is healthy, but

what we look for our company earnings. we look for the top four auditors. we are staying away from the most risky, the chinese banks, property developers, internet stocks. we are focusing on consumer discretionary and the retailers. a lot better than what we've seen recently. january and february was around 11.8%. retail is doing well in china. >> foreign investors don't believe it. americans don't believe it particularly. selling off etf chinese stocks and you think it is undervalued, then it is a buying opportunity, isn't it? >> it is warren buffett saying. the fearful what everybody is saying -- >> [indiscernible] >> exactly. record low evaluations. a .5 timesing about

for msci china. so things are pretty bombed out msci times for china. so things are bombed out. the corporateto earnings, things are pretty good. they first quarter was pretty good. most companies beat expectations. macquarrie had a very respectable performance for chinese stocks. you've got to do your homework before you risk any of your investors' capital. >> what do you think of the missed invoicing, export figures? >> yeah. >> as you look forward into the next couple of months, how is that going to play out? -- he worst of the >> same thing happened last

year. >> yeah. 11.2ts were down around for the first quarter. exporters were down 6.6. the hong kong portion of the exports, exports are actually up. i think there is some reason to go back to the scriptable comment. -- the skeptical comment. we've seen the market selloff. about a trade surplus of $7.5 billion. things are pretty good on the corporate level. but everyone keeps selling off and we've been very patient. that -- are not very cheap. and internet stocks are not cheap.

>> we had a mess of overweight in health care, the most expected sensor -- most expensive sector now. we've taken a letter profit in the last six months in health care. we had a massive overweight to the index. they are very expensive. internet, we've missed. it's too risky, too hard to value, so the recent poll off -- example, we, for missed it but we are happy to say that the recent pullback hasn't heard our performance at our-- hasn't hurt performance at all. >> alibaba could be as much as $100 billion or even more. is one of the figures that interesting is, if you compare it to amazon figures, he could be worth $1.7 trillion. so it is just a guessing game.

>> yes, hard to value. à la bob has taken stake in two companies that we are. babaey buy everything ali has taken stake in two companies that we are. >> they buy everything. >> it's all about smart data. >> and being conservative. >> [indiscernible] >> property developers we completely avoid. is, ifan't evaluate this we can't say what is the downside and if we get this wrong, we just don't invest. it's too risky. >> what's one idea we haven't heard of? >> that's a tough one. >> because we haven't heard about it. [laughter]

-- you puten buying me on the spot. household goods. >> household goods and that type of business. it had a huge run. money -- allarm our money in the last nine months into that company. fact that there has been a catalog quickly, that's fine. on that with aed lot of happiness for our investors. >> we have our group discussion coming up in about 20 minutes. >> coming up, deal or no deal? talks between the world's two largest gold miners has stalled.

>> let's have a look at some of the other stories making headlines. merger talks between barrick-newmont mining are said to be breaking down. the companies have missed it their self-imposed deadline to make a deal. osk hasllis k -- mitsui taken overits ships

by shanghai courts. mitsui was ordered to pay $28 million in compensation. it is appealing against the ruling. america" facing the challenger "rio 2." disney's decision to release ahead of the summer has paid off. a glitch for two of the world's largest gold miners. no gold giant being formed on the horizon. it seems that there was a hang up when it comes to finding and identifying the right minds to -- right mines to spin off.

barrick gold is the world's number one. they planned to announce his deal this week. both companies wanted to have a deal announced before each one's annual meeting. sources say negotiations could be revived. don't discount the gold giant just yet. they did try to merge several times in the past. according to sources, they still have an interest to do it. a bridesmaid but not yet a bride for these two. >> right. when you look at what is happening with gold, a lot of the reasons many say a deal would be helpful is because it would allow each company to not face such a depressed balance iset in lieu of what

happening with these depressed gold prices. off 21% on a two-year basis. this is due to the tapering effect by the feds. prop up gold will prices because it is seen as a hedge against inflation. you are going to see gold prices get a little damp and and you will -- dampened and you'll see the dollar. over $30 billion in write-downs for some of these producers. gold fell 20% last year. goldver you see decline in prices, the producers are going to take a hit because it is going to squeeze profits. mercedes continuing their early-season domination at the chinese grand prix. hamilton picked up his third straight win. it's the third time this season

that mercedes has had a one-to result. result. next, htc is now hoping that the competitions talent pool dries up. to there counting down opening in mumbai and it is just a few minutes away. let's take a look at how things are doing according to a higher open. we are going to cross their live when trading begins. that hearing in asia, this is what the picture looks like on this easter monday. seoul, the pressure is downward. seoul, south korea kicks things off in the first trading day of the week. we look forward to the afternoon business in tokyo. add at export growth did

lot of challenges for our minister -- for prime minister shinzo abe. we did see imports jump to 18.1% ahead of the sales tax increase that kicked in april 1. all of this during the action in japan. latest in 3:40 from now.

i dniester truce is broken in ukraine. -- an easter truce is broken in ukraine. for the chairman as htc tries to turn things around. taxing times in japan. what this new at levy is taking a bite of. happy easter monday. markets closed. kong, new zealand close.

the weaker yen driving exporters. philippians up by 1.2%. chart. the intraday for china, you can see it has drifted off a bit. they make a contrast. really quite a different. -- upf of percent again half a percent again. this is the pie chart today of the major stops moving around china. it was all red this morning. it's changing. marginal gains certainly.

telecoms are the biggest decliners. two stocks following. china unicom down half a percent. trying to play catch-up as they wait for hong kong to reopen tomorrow. >> japan is back from lunch. on the nikkei, every single industry group is seeing a gain. well.ial stocks as they may ease lending research is in japan. financial services companies are the best performers. matsui securities and nomura are on top of the stocks that are rising.

significant. a plus financial, 18%. >> bank of japan has praised the sales tax rise in the key -- ordinaryhe people have a different view. a different -- been in they has supermarket business in tokyo for 49 years. long enough to see their share of sales tax hikes. last time, when the tax lineup from 3% to 5%, the sales drop drastically.

i was worried we might experience the same this time. fortunately, it dropped slightly right after the sale site but i believe sales are coming back after three weeks. i am more worried about another tax hike next year. sales tax hike was in 1997 and it tipped the country into recession. today, prime and assertions are they aims to end 15 years of deflation. the government insists it is the right strategy. but opinion polls suggest the public is losing confidence as wages remain stagnant. abe's promise to create more jobs for women, japanese housewives see little change. >> there is no benefit from abenomics at all. there is no positive them act on us. at all. .

i hope this tax increase will benefit our children. >> i don't feel the benefit of abenomics. i am planning to go back to work after my third child. hard time finding day care and working conditions at work is not so favorable to let me work again. hike sincefirst tax 1997 appears to have had limited impact on small businesses and japanese households. yet there are real questions on the streets of tokyo on what the future holds here and whether deliver thell benefit that the government promises. once the darling of the android world, taiwan's htc has been struggling to compete in the high-end smartphone market. posted threeas straight quarters of losses and its market share has declined. it posted a wider than expected loss for the first quarter this year as sales fell more than

20%. they have fallen more than 80% in the last three years. there are big changes afoot at htc. let's get to taipei and tim culp -- andhed him culp and tim kolpin. >> sales declines, not a new phenomenon. but that has been going on for 10 quarters in a row. the market pretty much knows that. they rewarded htc accordingly with more than an 80% drop in shares. more recently, the chairwoman who i spoke with a few weeks ago, has gotten much more involved day-to-day. she along with a couple of others founded the company. since that time, she has not been a hands-on manager.

peter jo is focusing a lot more products, which means rotted design, product execution, manufacturing supply chain management. and basically making sure that the product they design can be manufactured at a high-quality and shipped out the door so they can actually try and boost their sales. that was a big problem for them a year ago. they didn't get all their ducks in a row. even though they launched the htc 1 last year, he did not come out in the timing they expected. was not veryuction high and they did struggle. but with the chairwoman coming back in and spending a lot more time at the office, previously she was doing one or two days at the office. now she is doing three or four days since the summer last year. taking a look at marketing, customer service and sales management. she is working with her team to

really focus on those areas and allow peter to focus on the product development issues. as an example of that, we reported on friday that she has paul for short contract goldman, who was the samsung usa mobile marketing. galaxy the whole samsung product in the u.s., very successfully of course. so she has hired him to help bring some of his ideas to htc and see what he can do. he will actually be reporting directly to her. involved, even since last week, attending a lot been seens and has around the offices in the last week or two. so that is one of the men she is doing right now, get more ideas into the company to which marketing -- to push marketing. >> it will be interesting to see

what ideas come from the market side. the celebrity endorsements have not taken fruity yet. but what does htc look like with the chairwoman there, increasing her role at the company? >> one of the key things that we asked her in the interview what is her turnaround plan. she wasn't really that clear. we spent more than an hour with her in a side-by-side interview. the key interview is the key point is that they had to come -- the key point that she gave us was that they needed to communicate that her. they stopped short of saying that they will spend more money on marketing. in the fourth quarter of last year, htc spent $1.5 million on advertising in the united states.

that is the fourth quarter alone come on not a lot. the chairwoman did not talk about increasing the budget but said over and over again that they have to improve their marketing. as an example, you talk about celebrity endorsements, they did hire robert downey junior last year. the most recent was gary oldman. come outign they have with this insane literally ballh blah, don't ask me, ask the internet. haveare trying to say, we a great product, ask anybody. ask anybody, and whether they know about htc, that is really a big point. york, even hong kong, how often do you see in htc logo or billboard compared to samsung or of course apple, this is a key thing that htc has

to deal with. unless they can convince people that htc is here, it will be really tough to keep pushing sales numbers. >> that to gary oldman ad is almost a little too clever. thank you. travel, let'so see what is happening in beijing. the fastest-growing foreign automaker in china despite being late to the game. alan mulally is expecting big things. >> i think it is going to continue because, one, the strength of the economic expansion here in china is probably going to be 7.5%. but in ford's case, we are plan thathe one ford you know well where we have all of the vehicles available to

china. the expanding product category and the economy, i think we will be. >> you have your eye set on the number three position for an automaker for sales. you are within striking distance of nissan and hyundai. yorty pass toyota last year. i know you like to sell product but you have to look at that number and say number three looks good and the number two. >> we love, love serving the consumer is in china. if we just keep our eye on the ball at making the best family of world-class vehicles, the consumer will decide who the leaders are. >> i want to know you for some numbers. quarter,n the first that means 1.084 million in china. is that?? the number you're sticking to? >> with their additional vehicles, our sales will continue to increase. >> you going to be over a

million this year? >> i think the customers will decide that they are deciding in a nice wave -- nice way right now. >> will it be higher than last year? >> [laughter] we don't make sale -- make predictions. >> you've heard this question before. you are late to the market but did they give you some sort of advantage because you have seen now have the luxury space works? >> in a way, that's true. after you've been through the big recession worldwide, you see customers buying value. can get them these greg vehicles with better pricing. andink these new lincolns the response are getting, we will do well here. we will import them for a while. as we pick up the volume, we will design and make them here,

too. >> will you see the day that china becomes the number one market for ford? >> it is the fastest growing market and we are excited to serve the market with all of these greg vehicles. >> you are -- these great vehicles. >> you are going to miss this, aren't you? >> i love serving ford. don't make me leave. member said the company is on track to reach sales targets in china. >> our first quarter, good results all around. brokehad another record, 100,000 sales in three months. it wasn't that long ago that 100,000 in a year would be a good result. i think we are on for a 2 million target but the world has some headwinds. it has some volatility. we will take it step-by-step, quarter by quarter.

but it started off well. >> martin winterkorn says he number one vw to be in china for the second straight year. >> we are confident because we have seen the first quarter again brought us double-digit growth. i see that our customers love our vehicles. not only the lamborghinis, but audis, andlkswagens, porsches. we asked the customer what they want. we are building vehicles specifically for our chinese customers and that is different from our european vehicles. >> that was your word from asia from the beijing auto show. >> up next, where is value to be had? that is in the discussion coming up. you are watching "asia edge."

>> back on "asia edge." thanks for sticking around. let's talk about a subject we didn't get to. how big a deal is this? >> i think it is a much bigger deal. >> [indiscernible] >> they've been talking it down. --e have been talking it talking about it as the milk train. about what caring the north to the south, which was about 2 billion rmb and all. what is interesting to see is discount hasare to party been closed.

there are about 200 mid-cap stocks that you can buy. you can buy 200 of these hong kong mid-cap stocks. we've got nine of those in the neustar sportfolio -- the new starts portfolio. ipo'skind of like 200 new . a huge valuation discount. really work out why a do what they do. >> what about the discipline? all this liquidity flow coming

into hong kong, what happens if there is a problem? that's why they had the joint announcement where it would be more or less a pilot scheme, six months to work in. a huged rather that than rush where everything is available all at once. it is more an all a cart many of them buffet. it is a nice, slowly conservative way to do it. i don't think that those liquidity numbers that i quoted before are that great, to be fully honest. they are not too great that they're going to cause much liquidity. >> looking at the shanghai composite, we are down a third straight in a row. these new ipos could take away capital from existing companies. what are your clients telling you? >> we are only buying h shares.

at the liquidity in the shanghai, there is what we call the south-two-north as well. so there will be 300 rmb and a quarter. rmbink there are 1200 annual. it will go to some extent to mitigate juicy -- mitigate qc. i think there's going to be liquidity coming into the market. >> how closely are you paying attention to the city deal. chinesea new way for companies to do perhaps this reverse ipo in hong kong, if you will? reform,u focus on soe there is a lot of companies that could follow the citic template.

and a citic telecom buy an called -- if you audi outside hong kong, you are making [indiscernible] i think it is really interesting that this type of conglomerate could follow in other cases. i don't have names but it's something very interesting. reform is something interesting going forward. it is really a guessing game on that. >> how does the rest of asia look for you? >> we really like korea. these three stocks. >> i am jumping on it lane at -- on a plane after this. gloria is very cheap. is very cheap.a

like hotel sheila. great.k it is >> that is the recommendation he gave. >> it helps that the samsung group owns it. >> it does. it helps the duty-free part of the business which is a part of the earnings. there are other airports at this company should win if it is fortunate. so there will be more of a pan asian field to this duty-free shopping. we like the tourism plays mainland coming into korea. numbers are up 30%. we own paradise casino. we talked about that one before. shares have done very well.

there is a number of korean stocks we think are trading well below their entry value. >> that's not the sales pitch. [laughter] great seeing you. still to come on the program -- >> a heads-up on some of the key events to watch for.

let's look at some of the stories we share on our radar. it is tuesday. kicking things off, china mobile. late last year, he began selling the gadgets in china. costly subsidies may well affect results. a big drag on than even though so we -- even though we see sales on the upside. >> we have president obama

beginning his asia tour on wednesday. he is also going to visit south korea and malaysia. obama was due to visit the region in october. thehe was delayed due to budget shutdown. >> this is the first developed country to see its interest rates go up. it is the only central bank to raise rates. are expecting another hike in the cost of borrowing. it's all about the hike, especially in japan. the cost of living probably ran ahead of japan sales tax. consumers bought before prices went up. the economy is looking for a slight acceleration. >> just a quick snapshot on how japan started off its afternoon session.

there we go. a record trade deficits. >> ¥1.4 trillion, $14 billion. that is it from us here on "asia edge."

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