Well, I am back from the east and survived as usual ;-) Lnaded this morning
Hong Kong was impressive with their sky s*****ers etc and the efficiency of everything. Other than that, so-so. Some awesome sights to see but you can do almost every tourist thing in about 2 days....
Malaysia, KL now there is a city saying WOW too... Spent new year at PT towers and watched fireworks from my hotel room directly across from the Towers.
However I see there has been some good action, on thin volumes though, on a great many shares back here. MTX???? WOWee. I closed out way way to early, but heck.....
East the markets are crazy and everone is extremely upbeat in China, Malaysia and even Thailand, a poor country by every respect, but they are all very happy that the worst seemed to have past....
I read somewhere or was told that when the gold buying frenzy hits the streets, as in jewelry and small gold coins/bars its time to bail on gold...now I am noy saying it but looking at the volume of gold being bought by our friends in Hongkong and KL....I was chatting to a guy I happened to bump into at a dinner, and we got chatting about various issues and then came to gold. Now he deals in gold at street level, retail shops etc. In just two days he had completed 2 tonnes of orders for investors in bars and coins alone.....but he said alot of it could be for the comming chinese new year but did hit that time is ticking. He would not say much more but did say play a close hand in the comming weeks......
Also expect a huge eastern influx for 2010 world cup. When those guys find out you are South African in their country all they wanna know about is where the best places are for matches, whats transport like, whats the accomidation and food like and I even had offers to rent my properties for dizzy amounts of money for the month......;-)