Korea? Ireland? Portugal? Spain? What a waste of time. Just focus on Christmas shopping.

Here I am sitting in front of my tv wondering what I should write about for this week's post Not that there is nothing to write about, especially during a week when the markets have gone through a hellish ride. We had bailouts and artillery firing on the menu and that is still not all. Throw in property curbs in HK affecting sentiment there and interest rate worries in China, no wonder the market did not have a good time.

Bear in mind, volume has been thin during the past week due to thanksgiving holidays and Christmas getting close. Fund managers out there are asked to close their books for the year by this time and that also explains for the profit taking in the market. For retail investors out there beware. Sell at your own peril. I do not want to sound like a broken record by calling for an overweight on equities. That is why I really do not know what to write about this week.

All I can say is, if you are worried about the Euro crisis, then you have fallen for the fear mongering exploits of the media once again. Think about it. Did you all read about Portugal and Spain during the May sell down? Are the current headlines new to you? Why was there nothing written about the PIGS countries during the August, September and October run up in the markets? When the markets are doing well, the good news flows like water out of a tap, but when the markets start to show some red, the bad news flows like sewage out of a sewer. Be objective. Be rational.

Everyone is talking about how the Irish govt will need to bail out the Irish banks by nationalising them. There is really some suspicion on my part on whether all the banks really need the bailout if the media did not create so much fear with their over-sensationalised headlines. Yes, Allied Irish will need a bailout, but according to Bloomberg's data, Bank of Ireland has a tier one capital of close to the required 12 percent. Why would this bank need a bailout? But with so many headlines revolving around the problems in the banks, who wouldn't go to the bank to withdraw all their money from the banks? Any rational person would do it. Bank of Ireland now trades at 0.06 times price to book and even if the Irish govt takes an 85% stake in the bank, up from their current holdings of 36%, the book value of the bank would still be close to Euro $1.34. This is one of the main reasons to why I really dislike the media for their irresponsible reporting without finding out all the facts. Causing unnecessary panic to sell more news papers.

What about the North Koreans shelling artillery fire onto the OBSCURE island called Yeonpyeong? The markets all reacted really badly when the news broke on the exchange of fire between the two Koreas. Most markets fell close to 2% on that day. What happened the next day? A full rebound in most markets. To make things worse, Korea's Kospi only fell less than 0.5% on the news while Singapore fell 2%. The markets obviously over-reacted to the news and the way the STI reacted, you would have thought it was us that got fired on. My goodness. The media reminds me of the story of the boy that cried wolf.

Since I started working in the investment industry, the North Koreans have fired on their Southern counterparts every 6-12 months. So I really am sick of the markets over-reacting to such trivial matters. They sunk a South Korean ship earlier this year and 46 people died, what happened? NOTHING. So 4 soldiers dying this time is really an improvement from the last incident. Moral of the story, do not worry about a full blown war resulting from these incidents. The South Koreans have too much to lose to go into a war. Not when they are making tons of money selling consumer goods like LED TVs, mobile phones and cars to the world. Unless there is a direct attack on Seoul, do not bother about such silly incidents. They are non events.

Anyway its getting late on a Sunday night and I really do not think there are any issues of significance which I should write too much about. Just keep the faith and buy more stocks. It will do you good over the next 12 months. Take all the stocks you have bought off your watch list and enjoy the Christmas holidays.

Injured my finger during basketball so will not dwell on too many things this week.

Till the next week, have a great week ahead!

Best,

SVI