Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Year of the Dragon: A Stock Market Boom?

The Economist says that the year of the Dragon will bring good fortune to stock market investors.

That would be nice to hear.

Here’s the Economist,

CHINESE people across the world ushered in their new year on January 23rd, which according to 3,000 year-old Chinese astrology is the year of the dragon. This critter is not a mythical beast. Physignathus cocincinus, to give its Latin name, is associated with power, authority and good fortune. For those looking for good news among the grim January headlines, this could bode well for stockmarket fortunes over the coming year. Between 1900 and 2011, the nine previous dragon years have seen America's Dow Jones Industrial Average price index increase by an average of 7.7% in real terms, the second-best historical record of the 12 zodiac animals. Such fortune may be short-lived however; next year's animal, the snake, has the second-worst historical record.

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My view is that the illustrated stock market returns has been coincidental, and has little to do with the fortune cookie from the year of the Dragon.

This is an example of the penchant to look for patterns or correlations to justify or rationalize a bias. Other daffy examples are: Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, Skirt Theory, Super Bowl, Lipstick and more...

Instead, the politicized nature of the global stock markets implies that the collective actions of the US Federal Reserve's Ben Bernanke, ECB’s Mario Draghi, BoE’s Mervyn King, BoJ’s Masaaki Shirakawa and the central bankers of other major economies will serve as one of the major pillars in shaping investor returns this year.

The others you can read here

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