Recession In Asia: It Is Already Happening

Recession fears grip Asian markets

Written by Surin Murugiah of theedgemalaysia.com

Friday, 23 September 2011 10:31

KUALA LUMPUR: Recession fears ripped apart Asian markets on Friday, Sept 23 as the FBM KLCI fell more than 1.9% in early trade and sank below the 1,360-level before paring down some of its losses at mid-morning.

Asian stocks, in particular in South Korea and Taiwan, fell sharply with foreign investors taking flight as concerns about global economic stagnation deepened on debt problems in Europe and an increasingly grim US and Chinese economic outlook, according to Reuters.

The FBM KLCI fell 1.37% or 19.08 points to 1,368.73 at 10am. The index had earlier fallen to a low of 1,358.47.

Market breadth continued to be negative with losers beating gainers by 541 to 50, while 125 counters traded unchanged.

Volume was 267.66 million shares valued at RM356.75 million.

At the regional markets, South Korea’s Kospi tumbled 4.84% to 1,713.49, Taiwan’s Taiex lost 3.80% to 7,027.77, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index fell 2.35% to 17,491.89, Singapore’s Straits Times Index was down 1.90% to 2,668.96 and the Shanghai Composite Index shed 1.29% to 2,411.58.

BIMB Securities Research in a note Sept 23 said that after the US Federal Reserve failed to rally the markets with their “twist”, global equity markets were all now doing the “limbo rock – how low can you go”?

At this juncture, with the fear button activated the global markets are playing catch down, it said.

It said Wall Street yesterday sparked into a selling spree pre-empting that Europe would experience what US did in 2008, adding that as result, Wall Street plunged by almost 400 points to below the 11,000 level.

Earlier, Asian and European stocks also a wave of selling as most saw declines of 2-4%, it said.

“For today, we would expect a spate of unloading ahead of the weekend for the regional markets.

“For Malaysia, we expect the selling to continue with the immediate support for the FBM KLCI at 1,380,” said BIMB Research.

Among the decliners at mid-morning, KLK and Dutch Lady fell 78 sen each to RM20.42 and RM18.10, Batu Kawan 44 sen to RM15, Panasonic 40 sen to RM18.40, Petronas Dagangan 38 sen to RM16.02, Hong Leong Bank 36 sen to RM9.62, BAT 30 sen to RM43.54, Tradewinds 29 sen to RM8.02 and United Malacca 25 sen to RM6.40.

The actives included Dialog, AirAsia, Trinity, Key West, Petronas Chemicals, MRCB, Compugates and Timecom.

The government still silence about this. Maybe to stop people from panicking or they are in the silent mode but actively in the progress to save our economy.  All stimulus packages already in standby just waiting for word go and all the preemptive action already been deployed. 

But Malaysian no matter it is recession or not the hypermarkets, the malls and shopping centers still not short of people.

However the world just recovered by the sub prime crisis. The wound still aches. The last thing we want right now is another recession.