Legendary investment guru, W.D. Gann once said: "Each decade or 10-year cycle, which is 1/10th of 100 years, marks an important campaign. The digits from 1-9 are important. All you have learn is to count the digit on your fingers in order to ascertain what kind of a year the market is in."
So I did a research on our KLCI prices for the past 32 years to see if there are any repetitive chart patterns and I discovered that:
- the years ending with 3, 6, 9 are usually bull years.
- among these 3 years, year ending with 9 has the biggest gain in history with 30% -175% gain, followed by 3 with 30% - 100% gain, and 6 with 18% - 22% gain.
- years ending with 1 and 5 are the worst performing years with year end closing price below or equal to the beginning price.
Although the charts are only applicable to the KLCI component stocks, but these findings are amazing! Most people think that market is random, you can't predict the market, however, the research shows that history does repeats itself and market is made up of crowd psychology, human behaves repetitively to certain external stimuli. In addition, in cycle analysis, it is believed that the "Nature's Law" or the "Secrets of the Universe" are affecting human emotion which in turns affect the financial markets. At least this is what Elliott and Gann had proposed in their books. Gann seldom revealed his secrets in trading as he thought that "people are not ready yet!" Gann had his unconventional ways to forecast the financial markets that I will not elaborate further (but I may in the future if people are more ready).
Since It is always good to use both fundamental and technical analysis in stock analysis, let's look at this findings objectively. For example, if 2013 is a bull year, then it must be supported by the fundamentals. The EU economy is weak with austerity measures, the US is recovering but unemployment remain high, international fund managers most likely will consider emerging markets to invest, especially the South East Asia nations like Indonesia, Thailand, Phillipines and Malaysia due to their vibrant economies that are undergoing structural change. As standard of living is rising for these emerging markets, these economies have rising domestic consumption, improving infrastructures such as the construction of Mass Rapid Transit in Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta, and moreover, all of these emerging countries have pro-business / pro-investment governments to attract FDI into their countries.
On the other hand, we must not forget history shows that with the influx of FDI, or foreigners purchasing our properties and shares, these emerging economies are subjected to the risk of hot money being pulling out if there is any negative news.
I do see some similarity between now and the 90's. Knowing what had happened before, it is important not to let the history repeats itself. These economies must do some precautionary measures such as cutting budget deficits, curbing asset bubble, and of course, let's build a more efficient government together!
Below are the historical charts:
