Taoyuan Nights

Taipei Times reports that Taiwan is catching up with reality and beginning to understand that Taiwanese 18th-floor 2-bed apartments are not actually worth more than Californian luxury detached housing (…or European castles!).

“The real-estate market is becoming a buyers’ market, with nearly 70 percent of home buyers expecting to see falling property prices over the next year” - and that’s from a real estate agency!

“We believe property owners may face a 10 percent to 20 percent downward correction in their selling prices in order to close deals” - in other words, take the ‘official price drop reported’ and add 10-20% to reach the real number!

They add that ‘people have apparently been over-optimistic about Ma’s policies’. Really? Are you sure? Are you trying to tell me that there aren’t endless hordes of mainland Chinese businessman trying desperately to buy up flats in Linkou and Banciao?

Also: the Japanese market dropped 24% last night in overnight trading. Japan’s NIKKEI is now substantially cheaper than it was 25 years ago. In other words, if you bought 25 years ago, and held on to those shares your whole working life, you have lost money in aggregate, apart from dividends. Crikey.

The US isn’t looking too cheery either! DJIA at 8284 as I write. In January 2004, it was over 10000! I drew a graph on Yahoo, but the fall is so sharp, you can’t even see it at the right hand side. Basically, we are ‘back to 1998′. The graph below will update over time, automatically.

Hurray for America’s ‘glorious decade’…

For what it’s worth - I’m buying the market indices like mad currently, with every penny I have!