I realised that there is a lack of really layman explanations behind the speculation of market crashes, beyond that notion of "there is a report predicting a crash". Therefore, I endevour to explain why I am not convinced of a market crash anytime soon. To balance the argument, I will summarise the crash advocate position first.
The crash advocate predicts a crash is coming on the following key observations:
- Oil prices had fallen by 60% in the last 6 months.
- US, EU, Japan debt had been rising faster than earnings.
- China's development growth had been slowing.
- Loan interest rates had been suppressed for more than 10 years and it must go up one day (and that day could trigger the crash)
- Eloba, Syria, terrorists, etc.
Another perspective for the same observations is that
- Consumers will enjoy cost savings directly from fuel and indirectly from fuel-dependent industries, such as freight/logistics (e.g. postal and courier services), transport (e.g. air tickets, train tickets, taxis), construction, power generation. The savings from every consumer when multiplied by the consumer equates to liquidity that could potential be fed into the retail market, assuming that people still have their jobs and are not afraid to spend.
- Debt has risen to a point where I think they do not intend to repay the amount. The likely philosophy held by these decision makers is to keep printing money until nobody dares to take your money. If the banker, politicians, voters all are not too bored about their debt, then why should we be bothered by something beyond our control and reasoning? So what if they go bankrupt? The US government stopped functioning for a few weeks and nothing was impacted.
- China sucked all the resources out of the earth over the past 30 years, and will continue to do that as long as there are mouths to feed. There are also developing regions in Asia, Middle East and Africa, except that hey are not big enough to make their growth look significant on a worldwide scale. So what if China's growth is slowing? Will that massive population still need to eat and live?
- Loan interest rates had been kept low because of the incessant money printing by major central banks -- US, EU, China, Japan. Each round of printing by a major economy creates some psychological effect and perception that they would need to also print or risk their currency get inflated. In layman terms, every major economy is trying to suppress their currency exchange rates to make it "cheaper" for overseas customers to buy their products, to make their income look higher for the same unit of goods they are trying to sell. Broadly speaking, countries that do not print will have their currency appreciate against those that print. For example, for every 1 yen decrease against the USD, Japan Uniqlo's profits increase by 1 billion yen. Uniqlo sell sames the same units of goods, same number of retail, employees, etc. but see it's profits rise when their home currency drops. Another way to see this is that the Japan central banks is encouraging their Japanese businesses to expand overseas to benefit from the depressed currency. Unfortunately, global expansion does not work with that logic.
- What can happen, may happen, but we should not speculate when specific events would happen.
Why I am not convinced of a market crash anytime soon
- Singapore is very reliant on global markets for income, and has a higher risk than her neighbours that had substantial domestic markets. However, the Singapore government also has paid a group of highly paid ministers and intelligent economists and fund managers. The most we can do is to have faith in them and that the amount of taxpayers money invested in their education and career insures us with good governance and some insurance against crashes. At least, there has been a track record of fat yearly budget surplus that makes everyone drool with envy.
- Bank deposit insurance will prevent a rush to withdraw cash and hasten a crash in the event of bad sentiment. Banks have to maintain a percentage of capital to operate to minimise the risks of over-leverage (i.e. borrowing beyond your income means).
- Population is still growing, although at a slower rate, and is intentionally planned to grow to 7 million in 2030. Population growth is the fundamental driving force for any economy. More people -> More mouths to feed -> More housing needs. Ask yourself whether housing price will be lower in 2014 or 2030.
- Historically, crashes will crash the stock market indices by 50% within a week. Anything around 5% is a just a correction and not a crash. After it drops by 5%, it rebounds by 5.5% to return to the same position it was at before the drop. In absolute terms, the amount could be the same, but when you take the percentage against a smaller base, the percentage is higher. Simple arithmetic. Just take statistics with a pinch of salt. Same goes to all the reports about housing resale indices seeing a large drop in growth percentage. For example, you grow at 2% in 2013, then you grow at 1% in 2014, so the sensationalised report says 50% drop in growth in 2014.
- Historically, crashes happen after really steep increases. Hence, seeing a few drops here and there just means a crash will not happen so soon.
Happy worrying.
Disclaimer: This is just my personal interpretation and is not to be taken too seriously. You may choose to believe the more qualified "analysts", "economists", etc. My objective to explain in more layman terms.
