On Nov 12, American rock band Guns N’ Roses belted out its signature November Rain in its sell-out Singapore concert. It seemed that nothing could rain on the market’s current parade, especially for the Straits Times Index, which achieved a remarkable ‘V’ just a fortnight after dipping below 3,000 points momentarily. On Nov 11 alone, the market enjoyed a 1.8% bounce.
In the “Hunt for Red October” (Chew On This, Issue 1061), I called October 2022 the cruellest month, and potentially the year’s bottom. This appeared to hold at least for a couple of weeks.
Signs are encouraging on a number of fronts. As markets climb multiple walls of worry and try to discount the forward, the media commentators and analysts have caught up with more positive comments, including a few who are asking whether the tech sector has bottomed after the Nasdaq bounced 1,000 points off its triple test of 10,300 points in the last month. That leaves the Nasdaq at merely 28% below the level at the start of the year, and only 43% below the 16,200 points attained at the November 2021 high we warned about last year.
