10 OCTOBER 1998, Page 28

Sell signal

MY BAD Advertisement Guide has its own reason for monitoring the IMF. Every third year the meeting moves out of Washington, and a year ago we were gathered together in Hong Kong to bow down in the House of Mammon. I noted then that the God was displeased with his followers and since then he has left them in no doubt. This bears out my Guide's maxim that it pays to go short of anywhere that volunteers to put on an IMF meeting. Previous winners for the system (though, of course, losers for everyone else) include Manila, Belgrade, Toronto, Seoul and Bangkok. You might like to know that the next one is Prague, but by then it may have paid us to go short of the IMF.