Fact 2 -What is going on with the crazy oil price? Touching USD150 per barrel is imminent. However, whether it is done by speculators or actual physical hedgers, whether will it soon touch down cheaper or continue to soar, so be it! How about we concentrate on more solid concern---IRON ORE/STEEL HIKE!!!
With all eyes on oil, nobody seems to care less about iron ore/steel. WIth Rio Tinto, the world's second largest iron ore producer, just concluded price negotiations with its Asian customers (96.50% increase for its ore) for the steelmaking commodity and world's third giant BHP Billiton to settle its contracts within these few days, this is the sixth consecutive annual increase in iron ore prices. Rio Tinto's settlement is higher than that achieved by Brazilian giant Vale, which agreed with steelmakers to price rises between 65% and 70% for its ore in 2008. Unlike oil, iron ore is not traded on the global exchange, hence speculations issue is basically out of the topic. Well, let us say goodbye to evercheap cars and houses and constructions and co.
Fact 3 - Have we done with oil? Not yet. We all might think that living in Venezuela is as good as living in heaven as the oil there is as cheap as water. But now the poeple there are suffering big time with inflation rate as high as 31.4%. What is 31.4% supposed to mean? To illustrate a rough idea, with all the mess going on, Malaysia is still managed to cope with inflation rate of around 5%.
Fact 4 - How is KLSE been doing? Erm...certainly not as bad as Vietnam or Shanghai who has just plunged from heaven to hell, with almost 50% of their equities gone with the wind.
Note that the stock prices are merely paper money until you cash them. The case in Shanghai/Vietnam is something that growing markets have to go through every few years, presumably when global market is down, I'd say that doesn't diminish the long term prospect of these markets.
ReplyDeleteNow if only there's a regime change in the next election in msia, THEN everyone should jump into the stocks... argh. Not happening.