My View on Shares Market - November 2013

We had seen a record year for US Market and Malaysia Market this year but not Singapore. Part of the reasons why were due to the changes of Singapore government policy on tightening up labor inflow as well as cooling measurement in property market. The changes has resulted in higher inflation environment and the government decided to allow slightly stronger S$ in attempt to battle with the increasing environment. 

As a result of increased rental & labor cost recently, I did realize that most of the companies in service industry were not doing really well, as we still see those in the retail industry suffered from a lower profit margin and higher overhead expenses. 

For property development wise, we saw a softer market condition with lesser new launches in private property market in-spite the fact that the government is pushing hard for more HDB BTO units for the first timers to subscribe. Nonetheless, I believe it is a good sign for long run as the developers may not suffer from "Sudden Jump" in property sales if anything goes wrong. I will treat is as a soft landing for the market to digest the oversupplied items in the market. I also have seen more developers switched their focus on oversea markets. 

For plantation sector, I believe there is a slow recovery in ASP as economy moves on. Nonetheless, I believe the increase in price is not as significant as previous. First Resources remains my top pick, but it is now at a higher price range. I still look good on Wilmar longer term as the crushing & palm oil business may recover from losses in long run.