Ordinary Gweilo

I have no idea what to make of the Hong Kong stock market.  In the last few weeks it seems to have become routine for the HSI to go up or down by hundreds of points for no reason at all, so in response to a general fall in stock markets all over the world, it wasn’t all that surprising that it contrived to fall by 2,000 points (8%).

That means the index has fallen by 14% in two days.  Yes, the prospect of a recession in the US is a worry, but is the average Hong Kong company really worth 14% less tonight than it was on Sunday night?  Don’t think so.  On the other hand, the earlier rise to nearly 32,000 was clearly absurd – and current levels do seem more reasonable.  But, hey, I know nothing, so I’m not going to risk a prediction. 

One thing I can confidently say is that lots of so-called experts will give us their predictions, and we will hear much about 200 day moving averages and key support levels and other variations on gibberish.  But the fact is that they don’t know whether the market will fall another 1,000 points or rebound or just becoming boring again (though I have to admit that the latter seems the least likely of the three).