Welcome to 2007 readers! Thanks for the earthquake in Taiwan I had to spend it in the office talking to clients who were flipping out over their taiwanese investments, and readers have been complaining that my blog is unaccessible now, since a great chunk of Malaysia’s internet traffic does travel along the Taiwanese pipeline. As for Bangkok, well luckily Thailand already had its fair share of shocks so the bombing did not really make anything worse of than it already is (financially speaking of course!) other than to demonstrate that the perpetrators are no better than the current leaders who have no respect for human lives. Or maybe Thaksin’s supporters were just outraged that he didn’t get a chance to put his policies in place or make enough money whilst in office…
Anyway earthquakes and bombings aside … I do not believe that New Year should change anything as far as markets are concerned so any themes which were working in 2006 should I believe be followed into 2007. So the growth of emerging markets should continue as should the rise of equities generally. My advice is to follow the money. Now there are many including me who think that there are big problems on the horizon linked to the cooling of the Chinese economy and the weakening of the US consumer base which will affect global consumption, but the million dollar question is when that will happen. Well, like I always say, I am a trader not an economist, so I have no idea. It could be this year or it could be next. In the meantime I will just take any opportunity I can to buy into good companies when confidence is weak and sell when confidence is high. Over Xmas we did indeed see some weakness in the KLSE which I used as an opportunity to buy into Genting (I will update my portfolio details later).
But I am still less than 30% invested in stocks because the market is still strong and I generally prefer to sell rather than buy at times like this. So here I am, exercising patience and still waiting for the bears to come and ruin the bull party, which will happen as night follows day…..
