Friday 4 September 2009

Idle container ships - A warning sign.

A small observation I made while eating sea food on the east coast of Singapore was the number of idle container ships that are anchored off the coast of Singapore. I was reliably informed by those that I ate with that if you can see the pink underbelly of the ships; it indicated that they have no cargo and are likely idle. I saw a lot of pink. Infact every time I looked out to sea, no matter which coast I was on, I saw a lot of pink. This is surely a warning sign that the global economy is still sluggish and that the inventory re-build is nearing completion.

I have since shared e-mails with a friend in the shipping industry in Singapore who tells me that the industry is still not in a good shape. Make of it what you will, but to my mind it does not bode well.....

2 comments:

  1. You are absolutely right Sir about your observations and the Baltic index (the best indicator on global economy and USD bottoming out) justifies it. When things are bad the market runs up and creates a bubble and sucks the last penny out of the investor's pocket because he does not want to be left behind (greed) and suddenly things go worse when all money has been siphoned off with some scam of the heavily hedged US banking and financial system (hits the stop losses). No wonder the world's richest investor does not live in New York but in a small town called Omaha. P/E based investing is the best way in any market and is the backbone of the Indian way of life (buy low, sell high) and an investor never gets stopped out.

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  2. Thanks for the feed back it is nice to hear from readers of the blog. I agree with your comments about investors not getting stopped out. Although I suggest trades with stops I am also an investor from the p/e school as per some of my posts regarding the nifty 50 which I intend to update soon. All the best with your trading.

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