By: Adrian Khiat
A mortgage crisis became a credit crisis and a credit crisis turned into a confidence crisis. It was panic and a sea of red everywhere on the street. I had never seen anything like this since I joined the industry in 2003 when it was the end of the last bear market.
I can see my colleagues and private banking friends in a stressful state where their panicky clients keep calling them to surrender their policies and to liquidate their investments. I'm not spared against this with several clients calling me over this weekend. One of them have an AIA endowment policy maturing in January and he is not able to wait 3 months to get his maturity proceeds. He was so scared that AIG will fall and will affect his AIA policy. I'd tried my best to allay his fears but don't seem successful.
The economic situation is a total contrast of what I saw about 15 months ago when everybody simply wants to throw money into the market. Today, it seems everybody wants to get out from the market. I really saw the emotional part of investing. I can understand their worries because there don't seems to be a solution of the problem. There are so many reports in newspaper that highlight how bad the situation is, how much the indexes dropped and how the world leaders are not able to find an answer. It simply looks like a bottomless pit to them. Read more...