Fortune may yet smile on those brave enough to seize opportunities
A tiger lantern at China's Yanqing ice and snow festival. Despite the uncertainties ahead, the coming Year of the Metal Tiger may well prove fortuitous to some brave investors. -- PHOTO: REUTERS
WHEN the year of the Earth Ox started 11 months ago amid the wreckage of the global economy, investors were hoping that things would mirror the bovine theme and plod along slowly and steadily while world returned to normal.
Well, we know how that turned out: Deep despair gave way to wild exuberance early on, as thundering herds of bulls roared back into the stock market to give the local bourse its biggest rally in a decade.
The Ox year ends in about four weeks, and investors have started pondering about what the coming Year of the Metal Tiger might bring.
Tiger years going back the past century offer few assurances. Indeed, they frequently heralded the start of huge conflicts or financial disasters.
Take these three Tiger years:
1998 was when the Asian financial crisis reached its heights. Millionaires became paupers when they were unable to service US dollar loans after currencies like the Indonesian rupiah and Korean won nose-dived.
To stop the free fall of the ringgit, Malaysia imposed capitals control and forced a shutdown in the then thriving Clob market which traded in Kuala Lumpur-listed shares here.
So it is no wonder that pundits - from economists to geomancers - are quaking with the prospect of another Tiger year about to unfold.
'The tiger is a most feared animal in the old days... This may be a year dominated by natural disasters, financial difficulties, political instability and environmental matters,' said geomancer Lynn Yap.
Bearish stock pundits would concur. They believe the cracks in the global financial system triggered by the credit crisis have been papered amid the massive intervention orchestrated by the US Federal Reserve and other central banks.
The day of reckoning will emerge in the coming months as central banks strive to find exit strategies to mop up the trillions they have thrown into the financial system before another massive asset bubble emerges.
China's central bank sounded an early warning last week when it suddenly raised the level of cash that banks must set aside as reserves. The move was widely viewed as its opening salvo to cool the country's over-heating economy.
The unexpected step spooked investors by raising the prospect of reining in the liquidity which sparked the huge rally last year.
It caused Shanghai's share market to fall 3.1 per cent last Wednesday and sent ripples across the region, with Hong Kong falling 2.6 per cent and Singapore down 0.95 per cent.
There is the concern over the growing numbers of unemployed in the huge consumer markets of the US and Europe, and the spectre of protectionism as countries try to stop the flow of lower-cost goods to protect jobs at home.
This could make the Chinese yuan's linkage to the ailing US dollar even more of an issue, as any further weakening of the greenback would make Chinese-made goods cheaper.
An even more worrying threat on the Tiger year's horizon is the risk of sovereign debt default in a major developed country, an event that could re-ignite the financial crisis.
Forget about Greece or even Italy, whose debt travails have been filling the airwaves, some would say.
Instead, focus on what may happen to Britain, which may have to borrow another £700billion (S$1.6trillion) over the next five years to finance its spending. This level of borrowing would bring its national debt to almost 100per cent of gross domestic product.
But Britain can borrow only as long as lenders are willing to lend, and some pundits reckon these lenders are getting increasingly nervous.
To compound the problem, Britain is facing a general election by mid-year and worries are growing that giant hedge funds will turn their guns on sterling if the poll turns out to be inconclusive.
This raises the prospect of a re-run of 1974 - another Tiger year - when a hung parliament triggered a series of crises which eventually caused a run on sterling.
But unlike that time, when a run of the pound affected only Britain, this time, any plunge in sterling will have a far-reaching impact on the global financial system.
Still, Tiger years have not been all gloom and doom.
Like the tiger itself, which is unpredictable and may pounce without warning, the coming year may well prove fortuitous to those brave enough to seize opportunities thrown up by the turbulence stirred up on the international financial markets.
Given that trends set in January tend to influence subsequent trading patterns in recent years, the buoyant market in the past two weeks points to a positive year ahead.
Fortune had smiled on Singapore in previous Tiger years and this year may prove the same.
In 1950, Singapore enjoyed a rubber boom after the outbreak of the Korean War, while 1974 marked the start of more good times when sky-rocketing oil prices cemented the city's reputation as a leading Asian banking centre.
The last Tiger year - 1998 - saw Singapore shrug off the gloom cast by the Asian financial crisis to forge a transformation of its financial landscape that started with the merger of DBS Bank and POSB.
Not surprisingly, as the next Tiger year approaches, another evolution is taking place in the local financial markets. Global lenders such as Barclays Bank are on a huge hiring spree here, with the growing allure of Singapore as an international financial centre.
Sure, there are plenty of uncertainties to make investors wary of being mauled by the Tiger - sovereign default, hyper-inflation, and even natural disasters like a major earthquake in Tokyo or California.
But we have seen how the impossible had a way of becoming possible in the past two years - as wild exuberance gave way to deep despair and back again.
Fortune will smile on the brave-hearted who dare to ride the Tiger and thrive. Gongxi facai.
Cai Jin runs every Monday and covers financial matters and corporate governance issues that can affect investors. The two Chinese characters marry wealth with good fortune - the two crucial factors that any investor needs to prosper.
Source: Straits Times, 18 Jan 2010.
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