Monday, January 21, 2008

External Shock Impacted Bursa Malaysia

Bursa Malaysia's Composite Index shedded 30.89 points today. Just only a week ago, in the midst of dismal performance worldwide, our CI glittered with pride. The index not only crossed the 1500 psychological point, it hit the record high. The run was highly speculative, driven in part by the heated hearsay on election.

But Bursa Malaysia also failed to withstand the external shock coming from USA. The stock run-down there sent jitters to our market, making players go on the rampage.

And since the run was election-driven with no clear fundamentals, the slide has been severe and shocking.

UMNO has given out directives to all its leaders to put on hold all overseas trips. This has been interpreted as a clear prelude to election.

Since the scene is getting clearer, the speculative drive based on election may have been exhausted.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Singapore's Straits Times dropped 6%.Looks like the trend will continue today,so far it has dropped almost 3%.I'm sure when the US market reopens tomorrow...it will drop too.Today it's closed to observe Martin Luther King Day.

Tony Hii said...

Anonymous, look out for Yen movement. The currency is strengthening and it is bad for the world stock markets. The unwinding of carry trades has sent out jitters.

Anonymous said...

Over here in US, the general public is not given too much information concerning the economic situation. News normally try not to cover these financial crisis as sensational. Are they trying to clam the market? I don't know. One thing as ordinary folks studying here, I know the petrol price keeps going up. The price this year is USD3.25 per 3.8 liter, 80+ cents more than last year's winter average. Eggs is about 2.00 per dozen when last year we can find at 89 cents. Milk is around 3 when we used to find bargain at 1.89. That is sure sign that things are bad. The daily news coverage on TV spend more time reporting the weather and traffic condition than the economic, and recently the 2008 presidential election.

Anonymous said...

tony,what do u do?Are you a stock market broker?It seems that you are paying close attention to the market.Definitely the bull run is over.Bursa Malaysia hit new highs mainly driven by speculation of election.

Tony Hii said...

ah giu, the stealth inflation in USA is pinching hard on Americans. The official CPI is low, giving false impression that the general price increases are not worrying. In fact, the official rate of inflation is nothing more than a set of politically cooked figures with motive to suppress interest rate.

Certainly Bush and Ben would dispute what I just said.

anonymous, I am not a broker. I am only a humble investor. Thank you for reading my blog.

Anonymous said...

oh dear my option on YTL came through today :(

Bengbeng

Anonymous said...

Fire Ben Bernanke...get Greenspan back for the job!

Tony Hii said...

Bengbeng, YTL is a good counter.

Anonymous, but Greenspan created together with Bush the major part of the havoc now.