Excerpts from The Malaysian Insider:
SINGAPORE, Jan 1 — If there has ever been a year investors would like to forget, the slow motion train wreck of 2008 must surely be it.
It has been 12 months of unprecedented carnage, with the Straits Times Index (STI) plunging 50 per cent to 1,761.56 — the biggest annual fall in its 42-year history.
Massive sell-offs and fund redemptions wiped out almost S$400 billion (RM960 billion) from the combined market value of the 783 companies listed here.
The total value of shares of those firms at the market close yesterday was S$393.04 billion — less than half the S$790.3 billion on Dec 31, 2007, and the lowest since the end of 2004, where it stood at S$360.7 billion.
Much of the damage was done in October, when S$123 billion of value disappeared into thin air.
2/1/09
Worse is to come as the present Global Financial Crisis will hit everywhere and it is very hard to hide no matter how smart the investor is. Time to sell all and hold cash. I paid a very expensive price during the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis.
Regards
Andrew Chuah
*Andrew, please do not post your address. Tks.
But if you stretch the chart over LONG TERM…… it may not so bad…..
get what the …. i mean?
TW commentator said in today’s program
if TW develops a singapore near the south,
that will rival sgp seriously.
he then suggest building 2.
malaysia JB has IDR.
If that succeeds, I can retire in a bungalow with a view that may cost me millions in sgp , if not unable to get one like that.
So, I am keeping my fingers crossed.
btw, TW ferris wheel gave a superb show on the countdown to 2009.
somehow, they manage to operate their ferris wheel without problems.
aiyoyo
400b wipe out, omg
when come back these $$$?
aiyoyo
aiya, its like tides, ebb and flow. one day it will come back, and it will be gone again.
I think the people will be more able to understand the message of the article
if it describes to them how does the 40% drop in value
AFFECTs THEM.
we are singaporeans, please.
Dear Singaporeans, be prepared for more price hikes in this year 2009.
The fact that half the market cap of Singapore stock has been wiped out in 2008 seems lost on Singaporeans. To read the news, one would think that Singapore is still booming. This is a part of the economic “Repression,” or denial by most of the media that we are in a Depression. What will Singapore do? Fire Singaporeans to keep the FT’s alive, or risk firing FT’s and losing them to other countries (not a bad idea). Singapore is in denial and overpopulated. Will there be Singapore boat people – it is possible. Luckily for them – other countries are nearby…
2008 witnessed a massive destruction of the Singapore economy. According to CNN, Singapore’s GDP slumps 12.5 percent. I’m no economist; I’m not sure how bad that is, but 12.5% sounds terrible (at least terrible enough to be featured as an article on CNN).
I can’t find similar news from our local news sources. This could mean two things: CNN is misreporting, or our local media are obeying their motto of “only listen to the good news”.
So far, I learnt it through Bloomberg news and this website. Only next year forecast was highlighted in Strait Times today.
http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/english/finance/10689687.asp?scr=1
Was this news about Creative Technology retrenching 2700.00 workers ever reported in CNA or ST ?
Andrew,
It would be helpful if you could share your experience on the financial crisis and why you think it will get worse.
I’m sure it will benefit the novice investors out there(including myself) who have not weather such financial storms.
I am seeing lots of stocks below book value (even after normalising it back to 2003 level).
Holly Shit !
hey fellows,
i got 1 doubt leh :
tw, hk and sg all have very different political systems. yet they were once called the asian tigers. why is it that different political systems produced similarly remarkable economic results? is it in the 80’s – 90’s USA and Europe poured money investing in Asia?
All these 400b is just hyped up money anyway. Hyped up meaning companies valued more than they are producing in cashflow.
More disturbing is the actual destruction of wealth by Madoff and what I think to be ‘illegal’ packaging of financial products into home mortagages and other products (like Minibonds)
No company in Spore has gone bankrupt yet so this is still ok? Or some SME has already closed down but nobody knows?
the problem is
many if not all people rely on the MSM newspapers for info.
no time, whatever reasons.
their impression of the real world is very much influenced by the impression derived from reading the msm.
so, i mean, if SMEs retrench or sack 10 hear and there or 100 here and there , i am not sure if all these are being reported? of course, only if they know there is retrenching going on.
why needs a news report?
just asked the landlords
they will tell you
of tenants sad stories
from lehman bros to the chua sisters
by the end of the day
the landlords would had said
now do i tell
MY sad stories to the bank
dbs included…………………………….
From a very abstract point of view, the present financial model is silly and broken. All the ‘billions’ lost during this crisis doesn’t exist! The value of a company’s stock is based solely on the public’s confidence of its value, and not its real backed-up capital. So all these ‘losses’ are more like restorations to their real value, and a reality check on them.
Any loses as long it is confined to paper lost , then no real harm is done. This financial tunamis was global and many investors in UK , USA and around the world lost large sum of money. It was a rare event. It is no consolation to Singaporean or anybody for that matter.Hopefully, country around the world had learned an expensive lesson. USA is proposing new regulation to manage banks hoping to prevent such disaster happening again. There is no garantee that such event would never happen again. Markets have a life of its own. Within one year three banks went to the wall. Starting with Icelandic bank, UK Northern Rock and finally US Leyman Brother. The signs were there but the regulators did not pick it up or if they did, they did not appreciate the gravity of the situation. The rest is history.