just last wednesday, chinese traded 377 billion yans or larger value in equities trades than combined 12 other large asian markets. some 368k new accounts per day have been opened by chinese investors over the last few weeks
when the chinese start investing their 2 trillion euros into the us markets, perhaps that's as good a sign as any to head for the hills
when you read the chinese news papers, it is being reported that families are borrowing money against their furniture, getting loans, etc.. and this money is being poured into the market
that is scary!
when the cab driver is giving you tips on investing, it's the time to sell
But for whom? It would seem the risk is to the Chinese market, not the US. While I was brilliant enough to get into the FXI (iShares FTSE/Xinhua China 25 Index) shortly after it was launched, I didn't invest enough to be dancing. This may mean the China market boom may start to level.
Cabbies here are still talking sports, so I think we're safe for a while.
at some point, the Chinese economy will slow, how much we can debate. They are simply building too many empty skyscrapers and soon their dams will all be completed. Then you can expect the prices of steel, copper, and cement to fall. How much so, remains to be seen. And how fast. And how much of the world economy is affected . . .
This is a major point of Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his wonderful book "Fooled by Randomness". Most of the daily (or weekly, or monthly) information that goes by us is just noise, without significance in a long term portfolio. This includes daily stock prices (in spite of the fact I have a ticker running across the top of my screen). The human brain is very good at finding patterns in things. It is so good, it finds patterns that aren't there. Since markets have such a large amount of noise, we humans find a large amount of false patterns. Can you spell "head and shoulders top"?
In my mind "Fooled by Randomness" is a must read for every serious investor. Among other things, it attempts to address the question, oft asked here, of "How do you know if a money manager is lucky or good?".
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