Maybe... just maybe...

My friend who works in the treasury division pointed out something very peculiar to me. If you have been paying attention to the currency and market movement around the world, you might just agree with what our second finance minister so proudly proclaimed last week; that our country is not, and will not fall into a recession.

Indeed, our very own stock market has plunged below the 1,000 points barrier. “But it’s only around 3%”, that’s what my friend said. 8% - 12%, that’s the average drop in the stock market across the globe. Dow Jones, what is arguably the heartbeat of all stock market, has plunged from 11,000 points to 8,500 points in 8 days.

What make our very own Bursa Malaysia so strong?

The reason why the stock markets are tumbling is simply because all the “investors” and fund managers just dump their shares into the market to get back their cash. I know of a fer overseas fund managers who just sold their portfolio and went to the pub and drink their sorrows away, during working hours.

So are they not dumping their Malaysian shares? Or… is there no foreign holding in our stock market? Words are going around that all the foreign investors have sold all their Malaysian shares after the 8 March tsunami.

So, if the foreign fund managers are all gone, who is holding our shares?

Our stock market is quite peculiar indeed. You can have 200+ counters falling and yet, the index can rise. That is because, in order to push the index, you just need to make sure a few counters perform well. So who is sustaining the market by keep buying all these index linked counters? Certainly not foreign funds. Ask around, and you’ll know. It might just be your money.

Of course, one can always say the above are all a load of bull and the reason why our Bursa is still strong (index wise) is because our beloved country is actually a damn strong country. Regardless of the extreme diarrhoea currently seen in the price of crude petrol and palm oil, the bread and butter of our country, we are still very rich.

And top that with highly capable leaders, recession will never come to our shores; just like melamine tainted products also never hit our shores. Milk of a particular brand can fail the melamine test in Hong Kong and yet, our papers can just squashed all the “rumours” by saying “xxx tidak mengandungi susu dari China”. Apparently these companies do not use cheap china based milk but expensive milk from Australia. Would you believe it……

Well, maybe our country is actually very strong. Maybe our country product quality control is really top notch. We just can't build roof and roads properly… that’s all. Maybe… just maybe…