January 18, 1983

Genius, it is said, is a rising market. And from 1977 to mid-1981, when property prices here quadrupled, Hong Kong was filled with brilliant financiers, developers and bankers. The kingpins were mostly local Chinese entrepreneurs, but the boom also attracted and was fueled by foreign investors and bankers. The upward spiral was fed by rumor and speculation. It was what one banker here called ''a classic bubble.''

International Andrei A. Gromyko warned Bonn that it would be caught in a sharpened nuclear confrontation if new American medium-range missiles were deployed in Western Europe. On the second day of a visit to West Germany, the Soviet Foreign Minister also said that Moscow was ready to negotiate a reduction of its shorter-range SS-21, SS-22 and SS-23 nuclear weapons systems targeted on Western Europe on the basis of ''mutuality'' with NATO. (Page A1, Columns 1-2.) The White House again repudiated as inadequate an informal agreement worked out by American and Soviet negotiators in Geneva last summer for limiting medium-range missiles in Europe. Officials underscored their opposition to any agreement that fell short of the American position, which calls for both sides to scrap all medium-range missiles. (A1:1.)

The number of sites suspected by Missouri officials of being contaminated with deadly dioxin has reached about 100, up from the 55 earlier suspected. State and Federal officials trying to cope with the environmental disaster still do not know its full dimensions. The Federal Environmental Protection Agency, using somewhat more narrow criteria than the state investigators, has listed 83 potential sites. Although some will be eliminated after testing, the environmental investigators say they fear that countless other sites remain to be detected or may never be found. Of approximately 55 pounds of dioxin hauled from a defunct chemical plant in southwest Missouri, about 43 pounds are unaccounted for, and the fear is that the compound may now be scattered across Missouri and possibly in neighboring Illinois as well.

The Bankers Trust Company, one of the nation's largest institutional investors, is planning a major overhaul of its money management functions, according to well-placed sources in the financial community. They said the changes - which appear to be aimed at heading off an exodus of senior portfolio managers to competing organizations - would be announced internally later this week, Thomas A. Parisi, who is charge of public relations for the company, confirmed that an announcement was likely but declined to provide any details. The key to the reorganization at Bankers Trust, according to several institutional brokers with close links to the bank, is a decision to create a separate investment management subsidiary, which would take over some functions of the bank's present trust and investment division. Compensation of the senior portfolio managers would then be tied much more closely to investment performance than is possible under Bankers Trust's existing salary structure.

Senior monetary officials from 10 major industrial nations agreed tonight to make available a $20 billion emergency fund to help deeply indebted countries, according to participants at their meeting. This Group of 10 will use the new fund to replenish the International Monetary Fund's own financial resources so it will have more money to meet the enormous demands for new loans expected from developing nations over the next few years. The new fund is to be established by tripling the Group of 10's current commitment to lend the I.M.F. an additional $7 billion whenever it runs short of money and by relaxing the rules under which this aid is provided, official sources said. Today's basic agreement is expected to be approved Tuesday by finance ministers of the 10 nations when they meet here to coordinate strategy toward the growing international debt crisis and to discuss prospects for the world economy, these sources say.