The Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET), which was up 3% yesterday (presumably fuelled by relief over Dubai), has lost nearly all of that gain today – partly attributed to the decision by the Supreme Administrative Court (which has a recent history of interesting decisions) to permit just 11 of the 76 projects at the Mat Tha Phut Industrial Estate in Rayong to resume operations. These 11 are reported as being part of the cleaner industry sector, although the others are unreconstructed gas-peddlers, perhaps.
What this does illustrate is the high level of volatility of the SET – particularly after the dramatic falls over the last couple of years have reduced it to just 700 points more or less which means that even relatively modest changes can have apparently significant percentage changes. This is then reinforced by the herd-like mentality of most investors and brokers – that is, once a sentiment of either buying or selling sets in to the market overall, then others will join the bandwagon and the effects become amplified. The result is, as we have seen over the past few months, a rollercoaster of fairly pointless ups and downs.
Meanwhile, as news comes through that Borders seems unfortunately to be on the verge of jeng (bankruptcy), this seems a curious time for Page One (of Singapore) and our own Central to be spending 200 million baht on opening a dozen Page One outlets for books – seemingly taking over from or supplementing the existing B2S operations. I am all for more book shops of course, even if the number of Asia Books and Kinokuniya stores seems to be enough in my view for the foreign book market (the latter carries Thai, Chinese and Japanese language books in addition to English ones). However, the Page One people seem to think that providing foreign books at some 30% cheaper will give them some competitive advantage. Let’s hope they are successful – I’m not sure when I will have chance to visit any of the new places but if I can then I will report back.
