A Short Drive to Manage Distant Investments : Securities: A new exchange in Irvine caters to Asian issues. It’s part of a growing chain.

The Arbor Village Shopping Center in north Irvine is three time zones and 3,000 miles from the financial heart of New York. But tucked in an office here is the Hung Foo Asian Stock Exchange Information Center, where the action can be as frenzied as any on Wall Street.

The Hung Foo exchange offers clients computer information on the Taiwan Stock Exchange, the world’s busiest. But investors don’t just come to watch. Using fax machines, cellular phones and long-distance telephone lines, they call brokers in Taipei to trade stocks.

Since January, this office has become a magnet for local Chinese investors, who come to watch 34 computer screens flash the trading action taking place thousands of miles across the Pacific.

The exchange attracts a broad cross-section of Chinese for two- or three-hour trading sessions six days a week. As Taiwan’s economy has boomed in recent years, many residents of the small island nation--bus drivers, housewives and businessmen--have caught stock-market fever.

One recent Sunday evening, Woo Young, a 39-year-old Taiwanese businessman who lives in Irvine, came to watch the action at Hung Foo center. “This is one place I know I can meet other Chinese from Taiwan and elsewhere to discuss business and events in Asia,” he said.

David Chen, a 35-year-old Irvine stock broker, said there is both a social and serious side to the exchange: “It’s fun and, besides, there’s nothing to do between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. anyway. I might as well try to earn some extra money.”

Many Chinese liken the stock market to legal gambling, and it has become so popular that brokers joke that Taiwan’s official acronym, R.O.C.--or the Republic of China--really stands for the “Republic of Casino.” Volume on the Taiwan market regularly surpasses that of the New York Stock Exchange and the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

The Hung Foo exchange is one of three trading centers operated by the Hung Foo Group (Taiwan)--a subsidiary of a Hong Kong-based conglomerate. The parent company has interests in one of Hong Kong’s largest stock brokerages and in property development companies, including one that acquired the Ramada hotel chain in 1989 for $540 million.

The other centers are in Alhambra in the San Gabriel Valley and in Queens, N.Y., both areas with heavy concentrations of Taiwanese immigrants.

Hung Foo officials established the trading centers after their research showed that most Chinese-American families retain strong economic ties and interests in Asian business.

Joe M. H. Miao, an official of the Hung Foo Group, said membership at the Alhambra and New York operations is in the hundreds and that the operations have turned a profit within six months of opening. The Irvine center, which opened three months ago, has about 100 members, drawing largely from affluent Taiwanese natives who have settled near the high-tech center of Irvine.

Hung Foo is considering expanding to San Francisco and Vancouver, British Columbia. As part of that expansion, Hung Foo’s parent is negotiating to acquire a West Coast satellite company to enable it to provide a broader range of financial news services to Asians throughout North America.

Hung Foo Group officials say that although many Taiwanese and Hong Kong investors have bought property and businesses in the United States, they mostly stay away from the U.S. stock markets. Miao attributes the lack of interest mostly to these investors being relatively unfamiliar with American companies and market regulations.

But another reason may be that many Chinese find the U.S. stock market too placid for their tastes.

“The stock markets in Taiwan, Hong Kong and other Asian countries fluctuate more than the American stock market, and many Chinese were making more money from trading in those markets than from the salaries they get from their regular jobs,” said Jack Hsu, Hung Foo’s project controller in Irvine.

The monitors list the latest stock market action on 272 companies traded on the Taipei exchange, beamed in via satellite to the firm. Other monitors provide the latest news from Taipei and the world.

Most of the members of the Hung Foo trading centers are recent Chinese immigrants with strong family and business ties to Taiwan.

“We estimate that there are about 600,000 overseas Chinese families in California and that at least one or two members of the family travel between California and Asia every few months,” Miao said. “We found that most of these frequent travelers have established businesses at both ends of the Pacific.

The Hung Foo Group is hoping that the Taiwanese government’s plan to open the stock market to foreign investors will help encourage more second- and third-generation Chinese living in the United States and Canada to invest in Taiwan companies.

One potential problem for Hung Foo’s plans involves talks between the Pacific Stock Exchange and the Taiwan Stock Exchange to give the San Francisco exchange the exclusive U.S. rights to supply stock market information from Taiwan.

“Our concern is that the Taiwan exchange might take away our license to provide trading information,” Miao said.

But Robert M. Greber, president of the Pacific Stock Exchange, said, “there are no plans at this time to bar Asian brokers or companies from providing up-to-the-minute information on the Taiwan Stock Exchange.”

The Hung Foo exchange in Irvine resembles a small movie theater, with rows of comfortable brown-cushioned chairs and a wall full of blinking computer monitors. There are several telephones that clients can use to call brokers and a booth where investors with accounts at Hung Foo’s Taipei brokerage fill out trading orders that are executed in minutes. On the wall are five clocks representing the times in Taipei, Tokyo, London, New York and Los Angeles. A table at the rear of the room has plastic cups and a large hot water dispenser so the traders can drink Chinese tea.

The center is open from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, and from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Fridays. The hours correspond with the short trading hours of the Taiwan Stock Exchange. The center charges members between $25 and $75 a month to use the facility.