Stock Market in 2010

A couple of weeks ago, I have attended a seminar on the stock market. This blog is to share with my readers, the insights which I have gleaned from the seminar with my two-cents' worth. A disclaimer here, the below represents only my personal opinion and it does not constitute any investment proposition. I hope that by sharing, we will all be more knowledgable and financially savvy.

As the world economy recovers from the Great Recession and the governments around will be reining in the money that is pumped into the system. For the governments, they will want to stock market to continue to go up as they have a stake in it. However, with so much money floating around, inflationary pressure is also building up. The tip here is not to "buy and hold" but to buy and sell when you make money.

In terms of IPOs, this year could see a bumper listing. Most people like to buy IPOs because these are "fresh" companies to be publicly listed. They would have met the stringent criteria set up by the authorities. As with the rest of the shares, if you were to buy, sell when you make profit as the market is expected to be volatile this year.

With inflationary risk going up, gold prices - traditionally, a hedge against inflation though not so in the long run - are also heading north. Though, gold prices are currently at historical high, when compared against Singapore currency, gold prices are not that high. The reason being, Singapore currency is getting stronger. So there is a likelihood that gold prices will continue to rise.

Besides gold prices, there are other tangible commodities which would also experience upward price pressures. These are crude oil, liquid gas and agriculture. However, governments are likely to try to keep these prices low as the prices of these commodities will go into the computation of CPI which mean higher inflation.