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Last Saturday I was invited to give my brief views about the market outlook and then participated in a panel discussion on the same topic. The panelists included Tony Sagami (Harvest Advisors), Tan Teng Boo, MD& Fund Manager (Capital Dynamics), Vasu Menon, VP, OCBC Bank’s Wealth, Management Unit. Moderator: David Gerald and myself. A copy of the slides can be found at the bottom left hand side of our research website.
The key highlights of my presentation are as follows:
a) Global GDP growth forecasts in 2010 are better than 2009 with OECD growth now higher by 10% from 1.9% to 2.2% while Asian growth has increased from 6.8% to 8-8.5%.
b) problems in the EU will continue but unless France and Gernany falter - its unlikely to get worse although more smaller economies could have problems. Hungary which caused the sell off in the US markets last Friday on comments about its financial health has an annual GDP of US$127bn - compared to US$177bn for Singapore and is about half the size of Greece.
c) stock markets have all breaches that 100 and 200 day moving averages and are in a technical correction thankfully on low volume
d) but this correction given the strong gains made in 2009 is a long overdule healthy correction and NOT a double dip. Read more...