“IS THIS A GOOD TIME TO INVEST IN MALAYSIAN PROPERTY?” IS INFLATION, THE TIGER IN THE FOREST??
Recently since January 2010 there has been much euphoria as it appears that a serious rally is in the making with the following cocktail of ingredients making for a strong brew of “irrational exuberance” in our local Malaysian equity markets.
1) Excessive Liquidity – local financial institutions flushed with excess liquidity with little alternative homes for investment. Also interest rates are beginning to creep upwards.
2) Upgrading by S&P 500 for the Malaysian Sovereign credit rating to A- putting Malaysia above the credit rating of Thailand and on par with South Korea This has led to many foreign institutional investors seeking to rebalance and invest in our local market in order to improve the quality of their regional equity portfolios.
3) Sentiment now recently in 2010, has turned remarkably bullish as we see momentum trading and theme plays begin to emerge in the KLCI especially after a long hiatus in 2006- 2008.
Whilst the equity market is making “hay whilst the sun shines”, it is timely to adopt a wider perspective to see what the future augurs for the fixed asset markets namely commodities and real direct property.
Correlation Analysis
Academic research has often corroborated intuitive acumen that there is a high correlation between the equity markets and property markets in Asia and particularly Malaysia. Academic research undertaken by the author over the Asian region has revealed that over an 18 year tenure from January 1992 to December 2009, the average positive correlation between the Malaysian equity property market is 76.54% and when compared against neighbouring Singapore (89.18%), Hong Kong (92.52%) and Philippines 56.45%. This research elucidates that the Asian region has a very close link between their respective equity and property markets. Thus one can safely conclude that a 20% increase in the Malaysian Equity market would adduce a 15.3% increase in the Malaysian Property market. A similar magnitude of decline if the equity market was to reverse with a 20% decrease. This was borne out in the Malaysian Property slump of 1998 to 2000.
When one was to compare regional Asian volatility over the period, Malaysian Property afforded a 16.36% monthly standard deviation with the average monthly returns of 0.52% which when annualized at 6.24% is a very respectable return given an 18 year tenure which straddled the Asian Financial Crisis (AFC) from 1998 to 2000 (Refer to Exhibit 1)
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