A Good Start To Year 2015

The first month of year 2015 has passed. I would say that the performance of KLCI surprises me.

In last year's January, KLCI lost 3.4%. This year it goes up 1.2% amid negative local market sentiment.

Brent oil price remain low at around USD50 and MYR continues to depreciate against USD. However, KLCI turns the table around by inching up for the first time since the "crisis" emerged in Oct14.

Has anything changed? Or just the emotion of investors have changed?

Perhaps market is boosted by enormous European QE and possible delay in US interest hike.

At home, government gave reassurance that everything will be fine, and mega projects will not be cancelled or postponed.

Even though KLCI gains just 1.2% in Jan15, quite a lot of popular stocks manage to register handsome gain of 20-30% in this period.

These popular stocks are mainly those which are expected to benefit from weakening of MYR against USD. Most of them not only recover from the heavy slump in the final quarter of last year, but also break their record highs!

Besides, oil & gas stocks staged a good recovery while most property & construction stocks also move out from their recent low.

For me, I'm still in the mode of collecting cash. 

I have a few targets which are in my watch list. With limited cash, I plan to buy carefully only when there is a significant drop in their share price like in Oct last year.

However, those stocks were climbing up everyday and some went into historical high. It seems like I have no chance to grab them, or at least I need to wait for a long time...

The consolation is, some of the stocks in my portfolio also perform well in Jan15, with only Scientex gives negative return in this period of time.

Overall it is certainly a good month for my portfolio, though I am yet to calculate the exact figure of gain.

Do you think current optimism can carry forward to the month of February?