The Shanghai Stock Market (via the SSEC) has been speculation central. It is one of the biggest casinos out there right now. But like any streak in Blackjack where you leave your winnings on the table when the cards are finally going your way, the smart players know to take some of it off the action and back into your bankroll. ... because the house always wins eventually.
And like with any speculative endeavor, you only make money if you find somebody to buy it off you at a higher price: baseball cards, Tiffany lamps, Mark Rothko's (yeesh), Houses, or shares of Stock.
It looks to me like the smart money has already cashed out and is enjoying a nice meal at Carnevino. Everybody else is still at the table because all the economists are saying recession is over, the world is in recovery!
So while SSEC is the real casino (and potential canary in the coal mine), the HSI is a bit less erratic / correlates a bit closer to the rest of the world's markets. But it is still very much tied to the Chinese and Hong Kong economies.
So a very interesting observation presents itself: ..... The HSI is not making new highs with the rest of the American and European indices. I just checked Bloomberg (delayed unfortunately) and the high so far is 20750 today, still below the peak around 21300 reached a couple of weeks ago. Maybe it is too early (and they will break it today).
But it is worth pondering, are the Asian markets, the leaders in receiving the speculative investment inflow, signaling the sea change of speculative investment outflow?
South Korea is looking a bit healthier (maybe not "healthy" so much, but at least less manic than the SSEC and HSI), but there is a *huge* resistance layer to be negotiated at the 62% retrace. Lets see how this one plays out
