Lex is a premium daily commentary service from the Financial Times. It helps readers make better investment decisions by highlighting key emerging risks and opportunities.
From record-breaking deals and oversubscribed listings at eye-popping prices to worries about technical recession and yawning current account deficits in just over three months. Investor moods change fast in southeast Asia.
Indonesia's benchmark has now turned negative this year and Thailand is close. A similarly sudden switch back into go-go mode seems unlikely. Since peaking in May, Jakarta and Bangkok have fallen by a sixth apiece.
After a 5.6 per cent drop on Monday Jakarta is now off 0.1 per cent for the year. Money put into Bangkok on Jan. 1, meanwhile, is still 0.5 per cent to the good. But that market fell 3.3 per cent on Monday after data showed it had slipped into technical recession with gross domestic product dropping 0.3 per cent, seasonally adjusted, in the second quarter from the first, when it had fallen 1.7 per cent. Year-on-year, it grew 2.8 per cent, about half its rate in the first quarter. Pick your point of concern – it is unlikely to be new. A two-year-old rice subsidy in Thailand is costly and inefficient, yet politically tough to reform. Sharply higher household debt – rising since 2009 – makes it hard to cut interest rates to spur growth.
In Indonesia, Monday's market hit came from its widening current account deficit – something that investors had until recently managed to ignore. It has managed to cut its even more costly fuel subsidy, leaving worriers to fret instead that it may not have a firm handle on the ensuing inflation.
Emerging markets are all about timing and mood. Those that spotted October, 2008, as the sector's nadir are still sitting on gains of more than 250 per cent in Jakarta and Bangkok, versus a mere doubling of the MSCI emerging markets index. That is probably enough to keep such astute investors content for a while yet. But they should not expect newcomers to feel the ease.