Do remember that August and September (when ang moh senior traders and fund managers are on holiday) are months where the market can crash because their juniors panic and sell. Thinnish volumes exaggerate movements. Btw, by sheer luck I will have extra liquidity to catch falling knives. Also not been reinvesting the proceeds of various takeovers. I could be lucky.
US recession indicator hovers near 41-year low
“IT’S TOUGH TO MAKE PREDICTIONS, ESPECIALLY ABOUT THE FUTURE” – Yogi Berra
The Bank of England got its inflation forecasts for the UK really wrong.
Deforestation in Indonesia and Malaysia has fallen sharply since 2016.
The u/m shows why global productivity is so low: too many “Quiet quitters and too little “Thriving at work”.
Given our low productivity numbers, we must have a lot of “Quiet quitters” both true blue S’poreans and FTs.
Time for our millionaire ministers to come up with policies to make S’poreans grumble less (LKY called us “champion grumblers”.
In the case of Brazil and India, “neutral” means “anti-West” and less friendly to Russia than China.
Fyi, we are “West-leaning”.
Btw, on a broad definition, the S&P 500 contains 82 tech firms.
Big slow down for us, M’sia, Vietnam and the Philippines, Indonesia’s slow down is “peanuts”.
But Thailand is the exception what with Chinese and Western tourists expected to come.
The tiny tots’ growth rates are improving from last year.
Related post: Buffett’s Japanese bet is paying off
Further to Very narrow S&P 500 rally
Art, classic cars, watches (Trumpets pls), handbags and wine were the ones to buy.
Macau is second in Asia after HK.
Buy a ten-year government bond when inflation is 2%, and the principal that is eventually returned will be worth 82% of its original value. When inflation is 4%, that figure falls to 68% (see chart 1). Over the longer run the gap yawns even wider. The principal on a 30-year bond will, when returned, be worth 55% of its original value if inflation averages 2% over that time. With 4% inflation, it will be worth 31%.
https://www.economist.com/briefing/2023/06/21/inflation-is-as-corrosive-to-investing-as-it-is-to-the-real-economy
And where would energy prices be if there wasn’t a war on?
So says a recent report by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, a think-tank.
The report designates China, India, Singapore, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates as “laundromats” for Russian oil.
Blinken said when meeting Xi recently that the US was not trying to “contain” China.
I hope Xi showed him this map and told him to read him https://www.economist.com/united-states/2023/06/15/how-the-pentagon-thinks-about-americas-strategy-in-the-pacific.
Makes China’s attempts to “own” the South China Sea (via the 9-dash line) pathetic.
Okinawa (part of Japan) and Guam (US territory) are unsinkable aircraft carriers.
And
The US has two unsinkable aircraft carriers off China: Japan and Taiwan. Four if you include Korea and the Philippines. Throw in S’pore and it has five.
Taiwan is also Airstrip One and Japan is Airstrip Two: shades of Orwell’s 1984.
Can’t blame China for feeling corralled, angry and frustrated
The first of an occasional series on Temasek dogs with fleas on them.
Bayer, an aspirin-to-crop chemicals group, shares are trading at around €52, about half of what they were in 2016, The wider German stock market is up by a quarter.
It made a US$63bn takeover of US crops group Monsanto in 2016. The market did not like the deal.
Bayer in 2018 sold 3.6% stake to Temasek for 3 billion euros at €96.77 share. HoHoHo: Time for Ho to take an aspirin?. Temasek was trying to do a Buffett? It still has shares in it: https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/shareholder-temasek-backs-re-election-bayer-supervisory-board-chair-wiwo-2023-04-03/
Do the maths: €96.77 – €52. Certainly not a Buffett return.
And do remember that our millionaire DPM says that our reserves are managed prudently. Not in this instance.
Democrats rule OK in c-suites.
Tharman as the economic czar must have shumething to do with this surely?
Further to American tech stocks wax, Chinese ones wane, American tech cos are valued more than Chinese ones
We and PinoyLand are in America’s corner.
We are lucky to be near Indonesia.
Recent forecasts have pushed the date further into the future. Maybe Goldman Sachs was right in 2003: 2041? Note Capital Economics (this year) thinks it won’t happen.
Eat your heart out Xi. The Hegemon will continue producing lots of it. China will have less of it in the future.
Tharman surely had a hand in this good result as the economic supremo?
The real China now a plodding tortoise
Buffett buys and sells multi-billion-dollar slugs of stock, not necessarily on a whim but certainly with great regularity. In a 2010 study of how markets react to Berkshire’s trades, researchers found that of the 230 different stocks the company owned between 1980 and 2006, it held 60% of them for less than a year, or considerably less than forever. It kept just nine of them for at least a decade.
https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/warren-buffett-he-invests-just-like-us-2023-06-07/
My view is that Buffett is doing what Keynes may have said
“When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?…”
Attributed to Keynes (and Churchill)
It seems the assumption behind the writer’s piece is that investing in stocks is easy peasy because facts don’t change. Well facts change. Think why Buffett sold off TSMC shares weeks after he bot them. China and the US were escalating tensions.
It’s the writer of article that is BSing, not Buffett. Buffett’s just investing rationally. He’s not like this tai tai who die die held on to her SPH shares that was her reward for marrying an elderly man when she was 25, Tai tai’s luck runs out, heading for Woodbridge?.
“When the facts change, I change my mind.”
The S&P 500 Equal Weighted index, which gives equal value to each stock, has fallen 0.35% since January versus a 9.5% gain in the S&P 500, where companies with larger market capitalisations account for a larger share of the index
The latter is now than a fifth above a recent low in October 2022 — briefly taking it into technical bull-market territory.
There’s a grim earnings forecast by Morgan Stanley analysts who projected a 16% decline in earnings per share for the S&P 500 to US$185 in 2023,
A joyless rally.
And doing dangerous stunts when confronting ships and aircraft of the Hegemon and its allies
Look at the map.
China has just warned western militaries to stay out of waters and airspace near its borders if they want to avoid dangerous run-ins with the People’s Liberation Army. The defence minister said the US and its allies“ are using the pretext of freedom of navigation to conduct navigational hegemony”. He complains that Chinese warships and planes don’t do these exercises off the Hegemon’s shores. LOL. It can’tbecause it hasn’t bases near the US of A.
The US has two unsinkable aircraft carriers off China: Japan and Taiwan. Four if you include Korea and the Philippines. Throw in S’pore and it has five.
Taiwan is also Airstrip One and Japan is Airstrip Two: shades of Orwell’s 1984.
The first two charts show that the fossil fuel companies are not interested in clean energy. Note extracting oil from sands uses a lot of polluting energy.
The next show that things are moving in the right direction.
The last show the magnitude of the changes needed.
Tai tai has to use SingHealth because she keeps losing $: Tai tai keeps losing money. She says to me (a regular SingHealth user: Will Gleneagles sandwich cost me a fortune? and Why I not KPKBing about MediShield Life ) that its better than private.
FYI, my mum’s experiences with SingHealth: Private hospital treatment, public hospital fees and Bill: Private hospital treatment, public hospital fees.
G7 is losing ground, but exclude China and BRICS is BS. Chart also shows mamas in MamaLand are deluded in thinking they are China’s equal.
Thoughts of a Cynical Investor 