Bursa Malaysia in the Third Week of August 2010 - Correction say the Pundits and Bullish say Me

I am quite familiar with the volatility of the market by now having followed it up closely since early 2009. Everyone seems to look up to or wait for economic figures from the US for their next investing actions. Every time Wall st rises and DJI climbs up, you would know that Bursa Malaysia would usually follow suit. So those of you who want to "time " the market is well advised to be in touch with the US quartely economic data but do so at your own risk! Caveat emptor.

I read market news voraciously as I have been trying to observe the concordance that is whether what they predict would come true as shown by the market data. Last July, the FBM KLCI has been slowly rising from 1340 to 1360 and by first week of  August it was coming to 1380. Blue chips led gainers. I gleefully saw my counters AXIATA, TM and battered SIME  doing their things, that was climbing up. Except for MAXIS which was oscillating at 5.28 and 5.30.

I was mulling over selling off some of my TM shares  acquired at 2.62  after the capital repayment last year, 2009 when the pundits were predicting a market correction in the third week of August. With the recently released better than predicted Malaysian growth data at 8.9 by Bank Negara, I did not believe them. Surely I thought the bulls would come in droves to our market despite falling Wall St pattern in the same period. So I stuck to my shares with silent prayers and true enough, the bulls drove up the index to more than 1390 at the close of the market last week. My TM rose and rose!

The pundits were left bewildered.

I had wanted to buy MAXIS at 5.28 before last week and in fact queued for it but it went up to 5.30 and the next day it went down again to 5.28 and yet I did not give a fresh instruction to my broker to re queue. And MAXIS closed at 5.40 last week... you cannot win every time!

I should not stretch my luck too far though and wait for the index to reach 1400 as predicted earlier this year. Time to reduce or short some positions and avoid the pain of a possible double dip recession especially with weak US jobs figures and slumping European market demand,  virtually rolling off  JCY, my new unhappy technology counter and other counters may be next. Follow me but blame yourself when my prediction bucks the trend.

Welcome to the roller-coaster ride of investing!